386 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



their mode of life, and the simple food they eat, there 

 is less difficulty in accounting for it. Fresh grass and 

 herbs and pure spring-water as diet must necessarily 

 act favourably on the state of the blood ; add to which, 

 a life passed in the open air, inhaling health at each 

 respiration ; and our surprise diminishes at what we 

 here see Nature do when left wholly to herself. 



It is not at all uncommon to find old rifle-balls in 

 deer, and the marks of shots that failed to bring them 

 down at the time. But where a bone has been shat- 

 tered, and the animal has still managed to escape, it 

 is really interesting to see how the splintered parts 

 will loosen and fall away ; and the wound then nicely 

 closing, the limb presents the same appearance as if 

 it had been amputated by a skilful surgeon. I once 

 saw a deer that had been injured, no doubt by a ball, 

 in the fore knee-joint. The stump had healed, and 

 was perfectly covered. Last winter (1851) I watched 

 a boar that had also lost the fore-leg ; but in this case 

 it was high up, close to the shoulder. It was shot 

 some weeks later, when I was out in the forest, and 

 so perfectly had Nature performed her work, leaving 

 behind no trace of a former fracture, that some were 

 present who insisted the animal must have been thus 

 maimed from its birth. There was no scar, no un- 

 evenness of surface, to indicate that the bone had once 

 been broken, which however was the case. 



But the hardiest animals I have met with are the 

 fallow-deer : it indeed takes a good deal to kill them. 

 I have myself seen bucks with several balls in their 



