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C. J. Cornish - The Naturalist on the Thames
"slab-sided," flat-ribbed animal, but a bulky, well-rounded beast. It took six men to lift him on to the bed
of fern in "Her Majesty's cart," and when there he quickly twisted round, and lay couched, bound but not
subdued, calmly regarding the scene over the side of his cart. A nice lot of chopped mangold root had
been put in his box, and we hope he enjoyed his lunch in the train on his way to Windsor.
The next drive was far more rapid, and its results more exciting. The stags were again brought round
from above Penn Pond, then through the oak grove below White Lodge, and came galloping up the long
side of the slope, straight for the nets. Then the brace of deerhounds, which, like the keeper, seemed to
know the game thoroughly, were slipped, and most beautiful they looked, one laying out, lithe and low,
just parallel with the haunch of one stag, the other driving the brace below. The single stag charged the
nets and was enveloped as before, but the other brace broke back and escaped.
Four in all were taken during the day, without accident or mishap. One of the keepers did have an
accident of a rather curious kind, when assisting to catch stags at Buckhurst Park in Kent. He was
galloping as hard as he could, driving a stag, when his horse cannoned up against another deer which was
lying crouched in the fern, as deer sometimes do. The horse went a complete somersault, and its rider
was badly bruised and hurt, though no bones were broken.
RICHMOND OLD DEER PARK
If Henry VII.'s palace at Richmond still stood by the riverside, we should have a second Hampton Court
at half the distance from London. It was almost the first of the fine Tudor palaces in this country, built
very stately, with a prodigious number of towers, turrets, cupolas, and gilded vanes, on a site as fine as
that of Wolsey's competing pile higher up the river. But though the palace has gone, the park is left. It is
the precinct now called the Old Deer Park, in which not one in ten thousand of those who visit and enjoy
the park on the hill which we call Richmond Park has ever set foot, except in the corner furthest from the
river to see a horse-show or a cricket-match. Old it certainly is. The park on the hill, venerable as it looks
now, is only a thing of yesterday in comparison with it. Charles I. made the latter, and the Penn Ponds
were dug by the Princess Amelia. The Old Deer Park was a Royal demesne when the Saxon Kings had
their palace at Sheen, before it was given its new name of Richmond by the first Tudor, after the Castle
in Yorkshire from which he took his title when a subject. In the middle of this ancient and forgotten park,
forgotten because it is neither reserved for the pleasure of the Sovereign nor thrown open for the
enjoyment of his subjects, it was lately proposed to build a scientific laboratory, to supplement the work
of the observatory, which is mainly employed in magnetic observations and in testing thermometers and
chronometers. The proposal is an instance of the mischief which may be done by precedent, and of the
way in which Royal favour may be misused quite unconsciously by persons who forget that the
circumstances which lent grace and propriety to a concession at one time may be so altered later that to
presume on it is an error of judgment. George III. instructed Chambers, the architect, who had been
doing work for him at Kew, to erect an observatory in the Old Park. It was a thoughtful act, at a time
when there were no public funds for the encouragement of science, and when the study of astronomy was
still regarded partly as something peculiarly under Royal patronage because its practical use was to keep
and make records to ensure the safe navigation of his Majesty's ships.
The application to erect new buildings was refused, for a place like the Old Deer Park, if kept open and
wild, and not built upon, has a present and future value to the health and happiness of millions of people
beyond any calculation or power of words.
It does not need much imagination to make this forecast. But as few people have ever made what, in the
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