xvi INTRODUCTION 



special privilege of a natural history licence. This has 

 allowed me to make extensive journeys which could not 

 otherwise have been undertaken. My thanks are due to 

 Sir Robert Bond, Mr. W. D. Reid, the Hon. John Harvey, 

 the Hon. Edgar Bowring, and Mr. Henry Blair, and especially 

 to Judge Prowse, who has at all times done everything in 

 his power to further the success of my journeys with maps 

 and information. I am also indebted to Mr. Alfred Gathorne 

 Hardy and Mr. John McGaw for the use of photographs, 

 and to the latter for his able collaboration in the map of 

 Central Newfoundland. 



The centuries roll by, but our primal passions to chase 

 and overcome the beasts of the field are just the same as 

 when Fingal cried, "The desert is enough for me with all 

 its woods and deer." In his mythological creed the Gael 

 believed that the Spirits of the Dead found delight in pur- 

 suing aerial deer over the mountains of the silent land, as 

 well as those of the earth. The poet Ossian, too, says : 

 " The departed children of earth pursue deer formed of 

 clouds, and bend their airy bow. They still love the sport 

 of their youth, and mount the wind with joy." Spiritualists 

 tell us that in the future state we shall continue to lead the 

 lives we have lived here, but with greater joy and wider 

 scope. If this is so, the pleasure of chasing herds of giant 

 megaceros on the astral plane will be no little consolation in 

 the Great Unknown. 



J. G. MILLAIS. 



Horsham, 1907. 



