THE FALLOW DEER. 321 



being gralloched, or not, Mr. Ross replied, " Every 

 stag killed on the Muckross estate is gralloched, 

 and the inside thoroughly cleaned out, where it is 

 shot, on the hill, and the animal is not weighed until 

 carried home. It is the weight clean that is always 

 entered in the game-book." He adds : " The 

 heaviest killed last season (1881) weighed 27 stone, 

 but whilst Woodcock-shooting last winter I saw 

 a stag that I am sure must have weighed over 

 30 stone, and which is still alive." 



THE FALLOW-DEER, although not indigenous to 

 Ireland, has long been known in that country as an 

 introduced species. The precise date of its introduc- 

 tion has not been ascertained, but it was apparently 

 unknown there when Ranulphus Higden, who died 

 in 1 363, wrote his " Polychronicon." From a passage 

 in Moryson's " Description of Ireland" (1599-1603), 

 it would seem that Fallow-deer were not imported 

 into Ireland until the latter half of the sixteenth 

 century. For that writer observes : 



" The Earl of Ormond, in Munster, and the Earl 

 of Kildare, in Leinster, had each of them a small 

 park enclosed for Fallow-deer, and I have not seen 

 any other park in Ireland, nor have heard that they 

 had any other at that time. Yet in the woods 

 they have many Red-deer loosely scattered, which 

 seem more plentiful because the inhabitants used 

 not to hunt them, but only the governors and com- 

 manders had them sometimes killed with the piece. 

 They have also about Ophalia and Wexford, and 

 in some parts of Munster, some Fallow-deer scat- 

 tered in the woods : yet in the time of the war I 

 did never see any venison served at the table, but 



Y 



