30 DAYS OF DEEE-STALKING. 



A vast quantity of these horns, and, indeed, whole skeletons 

 of deer, have been found, within this last century, in the 

 small lakes of Forfarshire.* Indeed, antlers and skeletons 

 of full grown stags are amongst the most common remains 

 of animals in peat. Horns so found are infinitely larger 

 than any which I have ever seen on living animals of the 

 same species. 



It must be inferred, therefore, that the animals them- 

 selves were likewise of very superior dimensions. At first 

 sight this seems difficult to account for ; but when we take 

 into consideration the altered circumstances of the country, 

 that immense tracts of wood have given place to barren 

 bogs, in the manner explained by Mr. Lyell, and mentioned 

 in the course of these pages, and that the deer have thus 

 been limited in food and shelter, we can no longer be at a 

 loss to account for this degeneracy. 



The red deer is not a very hardy animal : he does not by 

 choice subsist on coarse food, but eats close, like a sheep. 

 With his body weakened and wasted during the rutting- 

 season in the autumn, exposed to constant anxiety and 

 irritation, engaged in continual combats, he feels all the 

 rigours of winter approaching before he has time to recruit 

 his strength: the snow-storm comes on, and the bitter 

 blast drives him from the mountains. Subdued by hunger, 

 he wanders to the solitary sheelings of the shepherds; and 

 will sometimes follow them through the snow, with irresolute 

 steps, as they are carrying the provender to the sheep. He 

 falls, perhaps, into moss pits and mountain tarns, whilst in 

 quest of decayed water plants, where he perishes prema- 

 turely from utter inability to extricate himself. Many, 

 again, who escape starvation, feed too greedily on coarse 

 herbage at the first approach of open weather, which pro- 

 duces a murrain amongst them, not unlike the rot in sheep, 

 of which they frequently die. Thus, natural causes, insep- 

 arable from the condition of deer in a northern climate, and 

 on a churlish soil, unsheltered by woods, conspire to reduce 

 these animals to so feeble a state, that the short summer 

 which follows is wholly insufficient to bring them to the 

 size they are capable of attaining under better management. 



* Vide Ly ell's Geology, vol. ii. p. 259. 



