100 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



certainty is, imagination will be busy at her work. 

 His very countenance his widely-opened eye, always 

 on the watch even this must have awakened strange 

 surmises of sights more fearful than he had yet 

 hinted of. 



But that much ignorance on the subject should 

 have continued to the present day is still more re- 

 markable, since the home of the chamois Bavaria, 

 the Tyrol, Switzerland, Styria are not remote lands, 

 but lie in the very heart of Europe. Had it been 

 otherwise, this haze and indistinctness might have 

 been accounted for by distance, which effaces outlines, 

 and invests objects with tints, and shapes, and propor- 

 tions that are not their own. 



One author of recent date acknowledges that little 

 is known of the habits of these animals, and accounts 

 for it by the circumstance of "the chamois-hunter 

 being generally a rude, uncultivated being ; and that, 

 as to naturalists, they have seldom had an opportunity 

 of observing this animal in its solitary and dangerous 

 haunts." The writer of this ' New and Perfect Art 

 of Venery 1 repeats also an account to be found in 

 many earlier works, which as a curiosity is worth ex- 

 tracting : " One really great peculiarity is the way 

 in which the chamois cross the fields of snow without 

 sinking in. On account of their narrow and sharply- 

 pointed hoofs they would naturally fall through, and 

 the snow would be unable to carry them. They there- 

 fore hasten their flight in the following cunning man- 

 ner. The last chamois jumps on the back of the one 



