THE WILDERNESS 25 



danger, the jungle creatures owe their safety 

 to scent or hearing. Sir Henry Seton-Karr 

 thinks that jungle game rarely move until 

 absolutely certain of the danger. He tells me 

 that he once rode, in the heart of the Rocky 

 Mountains, within a hundred yards of a black- 

 tail buck, which stood among some trees and 

 there, no doubt, thought itself hidden from 

 view. The party did not happen to want the 

 animal and so rode on. The buck stood so 

 motionless that it might have been carved in 

 stone. Just as the rest were riding out of 

 sight, Sir Henry pulled up and looked steadily 

 at the buck, which in a flash bounded out of 

 sight. He also remembers having a driven 

 red-deer hind pass him within twenty yards as 

 he sat on a log in the heart of a Norwegian 

 pine-forest. Had she got wind of him, she 

 would have sprung high in the air and galloped 

 off in another direction. Yet the cunning of 

 woodland deer, when aware of danger, is 

 almost uncanny. Sir Henry once saw a stag 

 deliberately lie down in a pine-forest, wait 

 until the drivers had passed it, and then quietly 

 return to the woods and so out of danger. 



Harmony with surroundings, or what is 

 sometimes, though less satisfactorily, called 

 "protective colouring," is very characteristic 

 of many jungle creatures. The same sports- 

 man assures me that even so large an animal 



