HOMEWARDS. 293 



glad. We came to a meadow affording capital pas- 

 turage, and strewn over it were the rude log-huts for 

 storing the hay*. 



" Often enough at evening," observed Neuner, as 

 we stopped a moment or two for him to rest his load, 

 "often enough were stags to be seen here formerly. 

 The meadow, you see, is quite surrounded by the 

 woods, and as the sun was going down they liked to 

 come forth and graze." 



" In Suabia too, where I have often been out stag- 

 shooting, it was the same. At Nietheim, not far from 

 Neresheim and Castle Taxis, there are magnificent 

 beech- woods ; and you might be sure of meeting five, 

 six, seven, or eight good stags about there in an after- 

 noon, grazing at one time under the trees. But not 

 a single deer is there now ; the woods are empty, their 

 inhabitants gone." 



" Once, near Ettal, my brother saw twenty stags 

 all together in a pool," said Neuner. "He is forester 

 in that district, you know. It was in summer, when 

 the great horse-fly is very troublesome to them. An- 

 other time he met seventeen together. That was a 

 scene such pushing, and rolling and fighting with 

 each other !" 



"It must have been worth seeing," I observed. 

 "What a splashing, and how they must have been 

 coated with mud !" 



* After the hay-making the whole crop is put up in such log-huts, 

 and when winter comes and the snow is hard enough to bear, the 

 hay is piled on sledges and carried down to the village. 



