ach."

"October, 1847.--Another stag was killed after a good run. Two were
found, and ran some time together before the hounds in Park Hill."

"October 6, 1848.--The last stag returned to the Forest, after having
been in the woods, &c., near Chepstow almost a year. He was found in
Oaken Hill, and killed, after a run of three hours, in Sallow Vallets.
His haunches weighed 51 lbs., and the whole weight 307 lbs."

"The fallow deer of the Forest were reduced in number after the year 1850
by killing a large number of does. They were all fine animals, and when
the enclosures protected them they got very fat, and the venison of fine
flavour. They were generally hunted."

At the time of Lord Duncan's Committee in 1849 a general feeling
prevailed against the deer, on the ground of their demoralising influence
as an inducement to poaching, and all were ordered to be destroyed, there
being at that time perhaps 150 bucks and 300 does.

The remarks "Going after the deer," or "You don't, may be, want to buy
some meat?" are no doubt fresh in the recollection of many. Going about
with guns, in numbers too formidable for the keepers to interfere,
shooting the deer by day, and carrying them off at night, were by no
means uncommon. Poachers of a poorer and more primitive stamp are said
to have resorted to the expedient of dropping a heavy iron bar from where
they had secreted themselves, on the projecting branch of an oak, so that
it might fall across the neck of the deer which had come to browse
beneath. Or they baited a large hook with an apple, and suspended it at
a proper height by a stout cord over a path which the deer were observed
to frequent. They also were known to set a number of nooses of iron wire
in a row, skilfully fastened to a rope secured to a couple of trees, into
which, aided by dogs, they drove the deer. With such kind of sport at
command, we may be well assured of the truth of Mr. Nicholson's statement
before Lord Duncan's Committee--"if once men begin to poach, we can never
reckon upon their working afterwards." Ornamental to a forest as deer
undoubtedly are, and disappointing as it may be to the stranger to find
none in the Forest of Dean, we cannot regret that, in 1855, Mr. Machen
records, "there is not now a deer left in the Forest, and only a few
stragglers in the Highmeadow Woods."'

Besides deer inhabiting the Forest from the earliest times, no doubt it
was also frequented by all such animals as