In the instance in which I had an opportunity of witnessing their method of receiving visitors, the fashion was somewhat different. The park-keeper who accompanied me described, as we rode through the park in quest of them, what would be their mode of procedure on our approach. This he did from observations so repeatedly made, as to warrant him in saying that it was their invariable mode. It was perfectly simple, and I found it precisely as he had described it. When we came in sight of them, they were tranquilly ruminating under a clump of shady trees, some of the herd standing, others lying. On their first observing us, those that were lying rose up, and they all then began to move _slowly_ away, not exactly to a greater distance from us, but in the direction of a thickly wooded part of the park, which was as distant on our left as the herd was on our right. To reach this wooded part they had to pass over some elevated ground. They continued to walk at a gradually accelerating pace, till they gained the most elevated part, when they broke out into a trot, then into a canter, which at last gave way to a full gallop, a sort of "devil-take-the-hindmost" race, by which they speedily buried themselves in the thickest recesses of the wood. What they may have done in Mr. Culley's time, we must take upon that gentleman's word; but at present, and for so long as the present park-keeper can recollect, they have never been in the habit of describing those curious concentric circles of which Mr. Culley makes mention in the last quotation.
The late mode of killing them is described as "perhaps the only modern remains of the grandeur of ancient hunting. On notice being given, that a wild bull would be killed on a certain day, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood came mounted and armed with guns, &c., sometimes to the amount of a hundred horse, and four or five hundred foot, who stood upon walls or got into trees, while the horsemen rode off the bull from the rest of the herd until he stood at bay, when a marksman dismounted and shot. At some of these huntings twenty or thirty shots have been fired before he was subdued. On these occasions the bleeding victim grew desperately furious, from the smarting of his wounds, and the shouts of savage joy that were echoing from every side. But from the number of accidents that happened, this dangerous mode has been little practised of late years, the park-keeper alone generally shooting them with a rifled gun at one shot."
