174 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



thirteen were stags with antlers of various degrees 

 of development, but all in the velvet. The whole 

 packet were grazing on the roadside, where, as 

 is generally the case with moorland roads, the 

 grass was better than elsewhere. .Quite half a 

 mile away they got my wind, and instantly stood 

 at the gaze. And did those wild and shy creatures 

 gallop off like the wind on detecting the approach 

 of a human enemy? Not they. They were cer- 

 tainly not so stiff to move off the road as Highland 

 cattle, but they moved reluctantly, and only when 

 the intruder was close upon them, and at the most 

 they did not go a couple of hundred yards away. 

 A mile or two farther into the forest a head- 

 keeper's house, with the usual provision of kennels 

 and kennel courts, accommodating about a score 

 of sporting dogs, stands in the middle of a piece 

 of land bearing all the evidences of having once 

 been cultivated, that is to say, a well-defined bit 

 of grass in the midst of bracken, heather, hillrush, 

 and moss. Grazing peacefully on this, undisturbed 

 by the presence of half a dozen human beings 

 engaged on various duties, were from sixty to 

 seventy deer. As the stranger approached the 

 dogs in the kennels barked furiously, but neither 

 his approach nor their clamour disturbed the shy 

 and fleeting creatures, to stalk which is a high and 

 almost mystic art. 



In the whole extent of the other deer forest 

 alluded to, there is not so much as a yard of public 

 road. Yet here, as on the other, I found their 

 nerve quite untroubled by a human intrusion. To 

 take one experience from many. Well into the 



