THE RED -DEER IN SUMMER 173 



in the way of their seeking food from his hands. 

 At a later date I had another proof of their tame- 

 ness under stress of the same teacher, when in 

 snowy weather I accompanied a keeper with a 

 cartload of provender for his herd. Their feeding 

 place was on the side of a loch which bordered a 

 " sanctuary," and where, in horrid miskeeping with 

 the character of the animal in literature and art, 

 feeding-troughs were laid out for their use. When 

 the cart approached, the deer, stags and hinds, 

 came helter-skelter out of the wood and followed 

 it to the well-known place. And there, no more 

 troubled by human presence than hungry sheep, 

 they eagerly regaled themselves on a provided 

 mess, in which the principal element was, of all 

 incongruous things in the world, locust beans ! 



During the present summer (1911) I renewed 

 an acquaintance with two large and important deer 

 forests which provide in the shooting season, the 

 one sixty and the other seventy-five stags (the 

 numbers a shooting tenant is entitled to kill). The 

 mountain grass was growing bravely, and the young 

 shoots of the heather had just begun to tinge with 

 olive green the faded browns of the hillsides. 

 Grazing was abundant right up into the high 

 corries, and the conditions were favourable for the 

 development in the deer of all their natural wild- 

 ness. But even thus they continued to display a 

 disappointing tameness, refusing in the most 

 favourable circumstances to play up to their 

 character. Through one of the forests passes a 

 little frequented public road, and cycling over it 

 I came upon a herd of thirty-three, of which 



