RED DEER 87 



ORDER UNGULATA. 



EED DEER. 

 CERVUS ELAPHUS L. 



BUT for the protection of the deer-forest, it is very doubtful 

 if I should have been able to mention the Eed Deer as still 

 an indigenous animal anywhere in the district. Semi- 

 domesticated animals are kept in a few of the parks of the 

 nobility, but we must pass beyond Dunblane before there 

 is even a chance of seeing the Stag on his native heath. 

 The only deer-forest having any connection with the dis- 

 trict is Glenartney, the southern portion of which touches 

 the valley of the Forth, on the water- shed behind Doune and 

 Callander. It has been fenced in about twenty years, and at 

 the present time is said to contain fully 1000 deer. Stragglers 

 are occasionally to be seen outside the precincts of the forest, 

 but, as a rule, they do not wander far from it. I have 

 myself observed them on the hills to the east of Loch 

 Lubnaig, and Colonel Duthie informs me that he saw six, 

 marching in line, on the braes of Doune, on the 22nd of 

 July 1889 they were on the Doune side of the wire fence, 

 which marks the march between Lord Moray's moor and the 

 Glenartney forest. In the " Old Statistical Account " of the 

 parish of Doune (xx., p. 49), it is recorded that : " On the 

 sides of Uaighrnor, the stag bounds along the heath ; " and in 

 Graham's " Sketches of Perthshire" (ed. 1812), it is stated to 

 have been then (as now) occasionally seen in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Trossachs. " In hard winters," he says, " when 



