PARK. This term, in its legal signi fication as a privileged enclosure for beasts of the forest and chace, is at the present day nearly obsolete. Under the ancient forest-laws, the franchise of the highest degree was that of a forest, which was the most comprehensive name, and contained within it the franchises of chace, park, and warren. The only distinction between a chace and a park was, that the latter was enclosed, whereas a chace was always open, and they both differed from a forest, inasmuch as they had no peculiar courts or judicial officers, nor any parti cular laws, being subject to the general laws of the forest ; or, as Sir Edward Coke maintains, to the common law ex clusively of the forest-laws (4 Inst., 314). A chace and a park differed from a forest also in the nature of the wild animals to the protection of which each was applied. The beasts of the forest, or beasts of venery, as they were called, were tantum silvestres, that is, as Manwood explains the phrase (Forest Laws, chap. iv., sec.
4), animals such as the hart, hind, hare, boar, and wolf, which " do keep the co , verts, and haunt the woods more than the plains." On the other hand, the beasts of chace or park, were tantum campestres, that is to say, they haunted the plains inure than the woods. According to the strict legal meaning of the term, no sub ject can set up a park without the king's grant, or immemorial prescription, which is presumptive evidence of such a grant. In modern times the term is little known, except in its popular acceptation as an ornamental enclosure for the real or os tensible purpose of keeping fallow deer, interspersed with wood and pasture for their protection and support. (Black stone's Commentaries, vol. ii., p. 38.)