ABOVE THE PINE-ZONE 29 



over about a month, during which he fights obstin- 

 ately, makes long fasts, and greatly decreases in 

 weight. For hours he fights not only rival stags, 

 but sometimes the trunks of trees, " belling " the while 

 louder and louder, until he makes the hills resound. 

 After this the sexes again go apart, and while the 

 period of gestation is proceeding the stags retire to 

 the lonely corries to cast their antlers. When the 

 green brackens unfurl their fronds to the light, and 

 the air is full of the atoms of beautiful summer, the 

 does drop their young. 



High among the peat-haggs, nestling under the 

 tussocks of coarse herbage, the little red-deer look 

 out with wide soft eyes upon their mountain world. 

 The ling birds balance themselves on the hummocks 

 of long grass around them, the wind blows high and 

 free, and the hollows of the dark soft ground are 

 strewn with tufts of hair from the coats of stags and 

 hinds. Everywhere in the peat the slot of the deer 

 lingers, sometimes ill-defined and blurred, sometimes 

 clear and sharp upon the soil. 



The calves are at first beautifully spotted, and 

 when a few days grown are the friskiest creatures 

 imaginable. It is noticed that the hinds drop their 

 young near the same thicket year by year, and it is 

 of the rarest occurrence that more than one is 

 produced at a time. When two fawns are following 

 a hind it may be inferred that the mother of one of 



