in the park at Stowe) wild rabbits of various colours, viz. white, black, silver-gray, spotted and brown in plenty. No doubt these must be the descendants of tame rabbits introduced for the sake of variety.
Mr. W. Uthwatt writes:
I have seen a stoat after a young rabbit, and the old one come out and kick the stoat over with its hind foot, and the stoat run away. They all seem to go in one run when going out to feed, and all migrate in a body when there is insufficient food, or the place has been disturbed.
UNGULATA
Deer only exist in Bucks at the present time in some seven parks. Of these parks five contain
31. Red Deer. Cervus elaphus, Linn.
Ashridge Park (Earl Brownlow). the larger half of which is in Herts is the only one where the species can be considered as likely to be indigenous, or enclosed while wild red deer still roamed the county, it having been enclosed at any rate since 1286. ' The close of the Park ' of the manor of Ashridge (then about 1,300 acres) was given in that year by the Earl of Cornwall to the Rector and Fraternity of Bonhommes; and a confirmation of this charter was granted by Edward I. two years later. [1] ' The Park, about five miles in circumference, . . . was anciently in two divisions, one of them stocked with fallow deer and the other with red deer.' [2] Lipscomb states that the park contains about 1,500 acres, of which 385 are in Pitstone parish, 258 in Ivinghoe and the remaining larger half in Hertfordshire; but Mr. Whitaker[3] gives the total acreage at the present time as 1,100, and the number of red deer as 1OO.
Fawley Court Park. Within two miles of Henley, a portion of the park being in Oxfordshire. The park was formed afresh and stocked with deer by Mr. W. D. Mackenzie, the owner (whom I have to thank for the following information), about 1 88 1, and in June 1901 contained eighty to ninety red deer. It consists of about 250 acres. The red deer here are full grown at about seven years old, and improve up to twelve years, after which they go back. Duration of life believed to be about twenty years. A stag which had a splendid head of fourteen points for two years was shot the succeeding year (about 1886), and had then a poor head of ten points. He was an old animal, and the grazing was very short that year. The master stag was once killed during the rutting season by the two next best stags; he had something like seventy wounds on him. One Easter Sunday (about 1897) a fine stag was found by the keeper with his horns right through the master stag, who had just shed his horns; they were both dying when found. The younger stag was believed to have harboured a grudge against the master stag since the rutting season in the previous October. The chief rutting season here is early in October; calves are born in April and May. The horns of the older stags are shed early in April, but the last horns of the younger animals are not shed until the middle of May. Number of points, ten to twelve when five years old, and then run up as high as eighteen points. In hard weather the deer are given a few locust beans and acorns, a little hay, and ash-poles to bark. A deer park existed here at the breaking out of the Civil War, but the park pales were broken down and the deer destroyed by Prince Rupert's troops. In Memorials of the English Affairs[4] it is stated that in 1642
' Prince Rupert ranged abroad with great Parties, who committed strange Insolences, and Violences, upon the Country. . . . They broke down my Park Pales, killed most of my Deer, though Rascal and Carrion, and let out all the rest, only a tame young Stag, they carried away and presented to Prince Rupert, and my Hounds which were extraordinary good.'
The allusion to a ' young stag ' shows that there were red deer here at that date. Fawley Park is mentioned in Memoirs of the Verney Family. [5] 'In the spring of 1660 "Cousin Winwood " is negotiating for Sir Ralph the purchase of " my Lord Whitlocke's deere," which has also to be discreetly managed, for " if it be knowne at Henley that the deere are sould, my Lord being now under a little cloud, they will endeavour to share with his Lordshipp, therefore the sooner & the privater
- ↑ Lipscomb, Hist, and Antiq. of Bucks, iii. 432, 433. He is a little mixed in his account. Richard Earl of Cornwall died in 1272 and he was brother and not son of Henry III. (and consequently a younger son of King John). It was Richard's son Edmund who founded the house of Ashridge in 1283 (see Kennett's Paroch, Antlq. (ed. 2, 1818), i. 423 et seq.
- ↑ Ibid. 447.
- ↑ Deer Parks and Paddocks of England (1892).
- ↑ By 'Mr. [Bulstrode] Whitelock,' 'A New Edition,' fol. London, 1732, pp. 64, 65. (Not in the original edition).
- ↑ Vol. iii. p. 411.
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