1 2 8 SURXE Y SCENES 



the breeze and shade, and plainly unwilling to move. 

 Yet if a stranger pass to windward of them, they 

 will all rise, and when he comes in sight, move off 

 to a distance. So when, in the winter, the keeper 

 whom they know brings the hay to their feeding 

 enclosure, they will scent him from a distance, and 

 gather round the feeding-pen almost like cattle, some 

 even venturing to pick up the hay as he throws 

 it from the fork. But if a stranger be with him, 

 not a deer will enter the enclosure, and few will 

 appear in sight. Like wild deer, they seem to have 

 greater mistrust of the danger which they can scent 

 than of any object which they can see. 



At the end of summer, when the fawns are weaned 

 and the stags have grown their antlers, the herds 

 re-unite, and in September the battles begin among 

 the stags for the mastery of the greatest number of 

 hinds. Then among the oaks of Richmond Park 

 there are forerunners of the fights between the stags 

 which are seen a month later on the Scotch mountains. 

 The writer once witnessed a struggle of the kind, 

 when belated in Richmond Park, about nine o'clock 

 on a moonlight night in September. The moon was 

 up over the Wimbledon hills, and the scene near the 

 pool by the Sheen Gate was so beautiful, that he 

 sat down by a tree to watch the night. In a few 

 minutes a stag came up to the pool and challenged, 

 and was answered by another from the valley, which 

 soon trotted up to the other side of the pond. In 

 a few minutes they charged, and the crash of horns 



