GROUSE MOOES AND DEER FORESTS. 257 



cat or fox. On the deer forest, on the other hand, every- 

 thing must be given up to the utmost quiet, so that the 

 shyest and wariest of all wild animals may pasture in peace 

 and undisturbed till the art of man meets the instinct of 

 the animal in the attempt of the stalker to circumvent the 

 noble stag on his own ground. Often and often has the 

 sudden crow and whirring flight of an old cock grouse, 

 startled by the tread of the deer-stalker, given a note of 

 warning to the stag, maybe a mile or more distant, and 

 spoiled a whole day's patient labour ; often has some harm- 

 less tourist in search of ferns scattered a whole herd whereof 

 probably he never saw or suspected a horn. Hence it is 

 that owners of forests try their utmost to keep down the 

 grouse, and to this end encourage the ground vermin, and 

 forests generally swarm with the wild cat and the fox ; and 

 hence also trespassers are as sternly warned off as though 

 the great bare hill-sides were a lady's pleasaunce. Very 

 hard seems this latter restriction, so impossible is it for the 

 ordinary non-sporting Sassenach to see where the harm 

 comes in. Not a vestige of a deer can he see, nor does he for 

 a moment understand or believe that his mere presence can 

 make the slightest difference to any living creature on the 

 distant hill face, whose purple heather looks to him merely 

 an uninterrupted stretch of purple velvet, glowing in the 

 sun and sending up its rich honey scents to the myriads of 

 bees. But Donald from his shieling, watching through his 

 telescope, sees peering above a heathery knoll a mighty 

 pair of spreading antlers of ten points terminating in the 

 orthodox three- pointed cup. Crouched down in that sheltered 

 nook, with his harem of hinds keeping guard around him, 

 lies the magnificent " royal " that shall be the prize of some 

 wary stalker before the season is over; already his horns, 

 clear of moss, are taking the brown hue like the peat bog. 

 Donald measures them with his eye, and calculates how 

 soon that noble head may be expected to hang in the hall 

 of the shooting lodge, the finest trophy there; but as he 



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