CHASE OF THE WILD RED DEER 191 



committed suicide. This occurrence took place 

 when the late Lord Portsmouth (then the Hon. 

 Newton Fellowes) kept the hounds. A stag had 

 been ' roused ' in the open, and after a magnificent 

 burst, ran towards the sea. Mr Frederick Knight, 

 having viewed the deer at a great distance, standing 

 on the summit of a rock overhanging the Channel, 

 stopped the hounds, and the deer was observed, for 

 some considerable time, walking resdessly to and 

 fro on the cliff, as if seeking for a path by which he 

 could reach the sea. Suddenly, however, he was 

 missed, and as he did not reappear, some of the 

 field went forward to the spot where he was last 

 seen, and leaving their horses on the high ground, 

 repaired to the beach by a rocky path at some little 

 distance. On reaching the shore beneath the cliff, 

 the stag was found a disfigured object, mashed to a 

 jelly, the horns broken to flinders and scattered on 

 the rocks. It would appear that the animal, though 

 not driven or pursued at the moment, had deliber- 

 ately leapt from a cliff almost perpendicular on to 

 the rocks that lay some hundreds of feet beneath. 



The day upon which this event occurred, in many 

 other respects, was a most disastrous one. The first 

 intelligence at the meet was that one of the best 

 hounds in the pack had been killed and eaten in the 



