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a huntsman. Nothing seemed wanting but the "music," and we
almost longed for a cry of hounds to complete our enjoyment of
the scene. But hounds ou this occasion would have frustrated all
our plans. They would have moved the deer too fast, driven them
out of the coverts, and we should probably not have caught
one. It was the steady advance of a line of beaters that
we wanted; now hanging back ou the left, now sweeping
round on the right, then onwards and upwards, gradually
giving the deer the proper direction, until about twenty or thirty
yards from the net, when a judicious wave of the hat by a man in
ambush would cause a sudden headlong rush, and the next moment
a brown struggling mass would be enveloped in the yielding
toils. From Park Wood, with four now in the van, we proceeded
to Meriden Wood, where several deer broke covert before our pre-
parations were completed. The toils, however, were not laid here
in vain, for we took a fine buck with horns in velvet, and a well-
grown young doe.
We had now as many as were needed, without having
quitted Mr Pleydell's ground; but, at the invitation of Mr
Hambro, and in the hope of being able to secure a brace for
the Zoological Society, in whose gardens the Roe deer happened to
be unrepresented, we turned towards Milton Abbey, and proceeded
to draw the lovely wooded slopes of Delcombe, now moving a
pheasant, now flushing a woodcock by the way, while, from time to
time, the rabbits seemed to vie with each other in showing the deer
the way to the nets. But the latter were not to be taken so easily;
it required much care on the part of the beaters not to alarm them
too much, and to make them head in the right direction. Some-
times they would decline to be driven, especially if a bit of open
ground intervened between the coverts ; and, boldly facing the
beaters, they would break back to the woods behind them. astonish-
ing us with their wonderful powers of leaping. The bucks seemed
much more wary and cautious than the does ; the latter often went
headlong towards the nets, but the former would stop short, sniff
the air, and look about as if suspecting some hidden danger, and
then dash off to the right or left, and escape. Pailing to secure
another buck, we had to be content with a couple of does for the
Zoological Society, three or four others, not wanted, being restored
to liberty.
We left off in the evening twelve miles from a railway station,
and the deer-van had to travel slowly, to avoid shaking its
occupants unduly. Being anxious not to keep them in the van an
hour longer than was necessary, I resolved, in company with Mr
Porter,' to travel all night with them. We got the deer-van
on to a truck at Blandford, and reached Waterloo Station at
four o'clock the next morning. No livery stables being
opened at so early an hour, there was difficulty in procuring a
horse. Necessity, however, as usual, became the mother of inven-
tion, and a cab-horse was borrowed at the station, with which we
got the deer to Liverpool-street station, and soon had the van on a
Great Eastern truck in time for the first train for Loughton. Here
Mr E. N. Buxton, one of the Conservators of Epping Forest, having
been duly apprised by telegraph of our movements, met us with a
horse of his own. which took the van safely into the forest; and at
half-past nine (in less than twenty-four hours from the time of
capturing the first doe) the sliding door of the van was withdrawn,
and the Roes were at liberty in another county. They bore the
journey uncommonly well, showing no signs of lameness or injury