WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS 



mountain-fed stag will grow to. A large heavy hart is also 

 much sooner blown and brought to bay than a younger 

 and lighter deer. 



The breed of deer-hounds, which had nearly become 

 extinct, or at any rate was very rare a few years ago, has 

 now become comparatively plentiful, in all the Highland 

 districts, owing to the increased extent of the preserved 

 forests and the trouble taken by different proprietors and 

 renters of mountain shootings, who have collected and bred 

 this noble race of dogs, regardless of expense and diffi- 

 culties. The prices given for a well-bred and tried dog of 

 this kind are so large, that it repays the cost and trouble 

 of rearing him. Fifty guineas is not an unusual price for a 

 first-rate dog, while from twenty to thirty are frequently 

 eiven for a tolerable one. 



My object, however, in commencing this Chapter was 

 not to enter into a disquisition concerning greyhounds, but 

 to describe some of their performances, which have fallen 

 under my own observation, and which I noted down at the 

 time. 



September 227id, i8 — . — Started this morning at day- 

 break with Donald and Malcolm M6r, as he is called 

 (Anglice, Malcolm the Great, or big Malcolm), who had 

 brought his two deer-hounds, Bran and Oscar, to show me 

 how they could kill a stag. Malcolm himself is as fine a look- 

 ing "lad" (of thirty-five years old, however) as ever step- 

 ped on the heather; a head and shoulders taller than Don- 

 ald, who, for this reason, and I believe for no other, affects 

 to treat his capabilities as a deer-stalker with considerable 

 contempt, always ending any description of a sporting feat 



430 



