ESCAPE OF DEER. 167 



to their waterproof cases, we, as if by a common impulse, lit 

 the pipe of consolation in the shape of a cigar. Whilst so 

 employed, with our heads bent from the cold misty blast, we 

 again heard the man below us, shouting more frantically than 

 before, and looking up we were just in time to see him fling 

 his stick at another stag, who had risen from the same 

 spot and had cantered away in a contrary direction, passing 

 almost close to the beater. Like the first stag, too, he man- 

 aged to keep his great body out of our view as long as 

 within shot, although he almost ran round the man, as if per- 

 fectly understanding the difference between two double- 

 barrelled rifles and one walking-stick. We afterwards 

 ascertained that the two deer had been lying in a small 

 hollow ground at the foot of a single birch tree, which stood 

 a little in advance of the main wood. They must have been 

 lying with their heads close to the ground, hoping to escape 

 being seen ; and there they remained until they perceived 

 that the beater as well as ourselves were walking directly 

 towards them. 



In taking up a position near a wood which the men are 

 about to beat for deer and roe, the sportsman should go as 

 cautiously and quietly as if he was stalking a deer on the 

 open hill, as nothing will drive either stag or buck near a 

 spot where he has discovered or suspected that any con- 

 cealed danger is awaiting him : rather than do so, he will 

 pass within reach of the sticks of the beaters, having, like 

 human beings, a far greater dread of an unknown danger 

 ihan of one which he sees, and knows the full extent of; and 

 like many people taking " omne ignotum pro horribili." 



Though red deer seldom come down to the woods in this 

 immediate neighbourhood, I have occasionally seen one who 

 has probably wandered away from the Duke of Kichmond's 

 forest. 



Instances, too, sometimes occur of a stag being found in 

 the act of swimming narrow parts of the Moray Firth ; a 

 solitary deer who probably has been driven by dogs from 

 his usual haunts, till frightened and bewildered he has 

 wandered at random, and at last, coming to the shore, has 

 swam boldly out attracted by the appearance of the woods on 

 the opposite side. 



