22 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. ICHAP. n. 



difficult to guard against. Their acute sense of smelling enables 

 them to detect the approach of any danger, when they bound off 

 to their coverts, ready to return as soon as it is past. In April 

 they go great distances to feed on the clover-fields, where the 

 young plants are then just springing up. In autumn, the ripen- 

 ing oats are their favourite food, and in winter, the turnips, 

 wherever these crops are at hand, or within reach from the woods. 

 A curious and melancholy accident happened in a parish situated 

 in one of the eastern counties of Scotland a few years ago. Per- 

 haps the most extraordinary part of the story is, that it is per- 

 fectly true. Some idle fellows of the village near the place 

 where the catastrophe happened, having heard that the roe and 

 deer from the neighbouring woods were in the habit of feeding 

 in some fields of high corn, two of them repaired to the place 

 in the dusk of the evening with a loaded gun, to wait for the 

 arrival of the deer at their nightly feeding-ground. They had 

 waited some time, and the evening shades were making all objects 

 more and more indistinct every moment, when they heard a 

 rustling in the standing corn, at a short distance from them, and 

 looking in the direction, they saw some large animal moving. 

 Having no doubt that it was a deer that they saw, the man who 

 had the gun took his aim, his finger was on the trigger, and his 

 eye along the barrel ; he waited, however, to get a clearer view 

 of the animal, which had ceased moving. At this instant, his 

 companion, who was close to him, saw, to his astonishment, the 

 flash of a gun from the spot where the supposed deer was, and 

 almost before he heard the report his companion fell back dead 

 upon him, and with the same ball he himself received a mortal 

 wound. The horror and astonishment of the author of this 

 unlucky deed can scarcely be imagined when, on running up, lie 

 found, instead of a deer, one man lying dead and another sense- 

 less and mortally wounded. Luckily, as it happened, the wounded 

 man lived long enough to declare before witnesses that his death 

 was occasioned solely by accident, and that his companion, at the 

 moment of his being killed, was aiming at the man who killed 

 them. The latter did not long survive the affair. Struck with 

 grief and sorrow at the mistake he had committed, his mind and 

 health gave way, and he died soon afterwards. 



The difference in the colour and kind of hair that a roe's skin 



