46 THE HIGHLANDS IN WINTER 



Herds of red deer may be seen close to the railway 

 at various places. Hard pressed as these have been for 

 food for some weeks past, the hinds still seem in fairly 

 good condition, for the herbage is still fresh under the 

 snow, and deer can scrape away the covering with their 

 sharp hoofs. Still, it takes a great deal of grass to fill 

 the stomach of a stag. Where they are beyond reach 

 of hand-feeding, the poor beasts must be feeling the 

 effects of short commons ; and it will go harder with 

 them yet in the long, laggard Highland spring, for it is 

 late before any life stirs in the wan hill herbage. We 

 are accustomed to regard red deer as beasts of the 

 mountain, like chamois and ibex, but naturally they 

 prefer the woodland and vale. Greedy man has grasped 

 all the fat places of the earth, so deer have been driven 

 to the high grounds, and have deteriorated greatly in 

 consequence. Highland antlers, even the best of them, 

 are puny affairs compared with those produced in 

 German forests or in Windsor Park. The immense 

 horns which are dug out of lowland mosses and 

 estuaries show what magnificent heads were produced 

 in Scotland when the deer were free to roam where 

 they listed. As long, however, as a stag can get a dry 

 bed, he can endure a very low temperature, and a hard 

 winter like this tells with less severity on a red deer 

 than a wet one. 



There is news from Rannoch, the bleakest tract of 

 moorland in Scotland, of the heaviest snowfall within 

 living memory. It will be hardly credible to those 

 who know the red deer only when the stags are in 



