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Hunting the Deer

TAG-HUNTING | often seen in herds of upwards of a thouhas been a favor- sand, and when in a track where there is ite pastime from no human abode for twenty or thirty very remote peri- miles, a long line of bucks appear on a ods. In Britain, height, with their branching horns relarge tracts of lieved against a mountain sky the sight land were set is very imposing. apart for making Of the prodigious strength of the Stag forests, as a when chased, the instances are numerous. shelter to these One of these animals, which had afforded animals; even vil- the late Lord Derby's hounds a very fine lages and sacred edifices were destroyed, run, leaped a boarded gate into a gentleand their site changed into a wide waste. man's grounds, with a spiked roller on In the reigns of William Rufus and the top of it, the height of the gate and Henry I, it was considered more criminal roller being eight feet four inches. The to kill a beast of chase than a human feat was the more remarkable as the being.

Deer was apparently run down at the In after times, while immense tracts time, with hounds snatching at his haunches as he came down the road from which he took the leap. yet lay wild and unbroken by the plough, Deer abounded in much greater numbers than at present, protected, too, by the severest laws. The stealer of Deer and the outlaw were then convertible terms; and the ballads of our rude forefathers celebrate the deeds of men who, in defiance of the edicts of absolute monarchs, "bent their bows and lived upon the chase." The stag-hounds that formerly roused the Deer on the moors of the west of England are at present dispersed. Few, or none, are to be seen where they were once numerous. The sport of stag-hunting is still, however, not entirely given up in England, though wild stags are no longer hunted.

But in the central part of the Grampians there are still large herds of red Deer. The Deer are seldom on the summits, but generally in the glens. They are In Shakespeare's "As You Like It," one of the lords gives a touching picture of the sufferings of the chased Stag to the banished Duke in the Forest of Arden: "To-day, my Lord of Amiens and myself Did steal behind him, as he lay along Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood; To the which place a poor sequestered Stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heaved forth such groans, That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting; and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool, Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears."

It seldom happens that a whole flock of Antelopes lies down to rest all at the