TRACKING DEER BY SLOT. 135 



down. A willow or quick-beam not being 

 handy, he will attack a fir. Next season 

 you may see such a fir, which was used as 

 a fraying post, dead and dry, the bark 

 having been completely stripped from it 

 ringed up to about the height of one's 

 chest. Deep parallel indentations score the 

 hard wood where the points of the antlers 

 have grooved it, as if with an iron instru- 

 ment, and in these grooves hair still ad- 

 heres. Numbers of such firs thus destroyed 

 are cut down for firewood ; now and then 

 one survives, not being quite ringed, and 

 lives with wide gaps in its bark. Such 

 softer woods as that of the mountain-ash 

 are not only barked but broken. 



A meet being fixed, the harbourer goes 

 over to the district on the previous day. In 

 the afternoon he starts for the covers or 

 likely places, and if he meets a labourer or 

 others in the field inquires if any of the 



