ANIMALS OP NORTH AMERICA. 91 



Indians have found time to catch a salmon-trout or two through 

 the ice of some frozen- lake, or the sportsmen have brought 

 down a brace or two of ruffed or Canada grouse is roasting 

 on wooden spits before the fire, with the rich gravy dripping 

 on the biscuits, which are to serve thereafter as platters for 

 the savory broil. Then comes the merry meal, seasoned by 

 the hunters' Spartan sauce fatigue and hunger ; and when 

 the appetites of all are satiated with forest fare, succeed the 

 composing fumes of the hunter's pipe, replenished with * the 

 Indian weed that briefly burns,' and such yarns as are spun 

 nowhere, unless it be in a forest camp, are told. * * * 

 Awake, while the stars are yet bright and the air keen -and 

 cold, the brook, which last night tempered the goblets, this 

 morning laves the brow and replenishes the kettles, and a 

 brief early breakfast precedes the quick tramp through the 

 morning's gloaming. It is a sport for men, not to be essayed 

 by babes or sucklings. No particular fitness is required 

 except stout thews and sinews to be long-winded and accus- 

 tomed to field exercise and, en passant, no man roughs it 

 better than a thorough-bred English gentleman; it is the 

 Cockney who first gives himself airs, and everybody else 

 trouble, and then gives out!" 



THE COMMON DEER of North America ( Oervus Virgini- 

 a?ms) differs entirely from all the European or Indian varieties 

 of this order. It is smaller in size than the red deer hart 

 and hind of the British Isles and the European continent 

 and is far inferior to it in stateliness of character, in bearing, 

 and in the size and extent of its antlers. From the fallow 

 deer of Europe it differs in being much larger, and having 

 branched instead of palmated horns. It is so much larger 

 than the roebuck, and differs from it so greatly in all respects, 

 that it is needless to enter minutely into the difference. 



This beautiful animal abounded formerly in every part of 

 this continent, from the extreme northeast to Mexico, or 

 still farther south, and it is even now found in consider- 



