THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



by his family, and all disappear over the rocky 

 ridge. 



Now is the time for speed I Up, up the hill, 

 scramble under, over, through the great loose 

 fragments, but noiselessly, silently, for the game 

 are probably not far off. Now you are at the 

 rock over which you saw them go. The guide 

 peeps cautiously over, and beckons. You, too, 

 peep, and there they are, all unsuspecting, a hun- 

 dred yards off. The old guide now lies down on 

 the snow, and wriggles along from rock to rock 

 to get round, whence he may drive them toward 

 you. The deer are still busy munching the moss, 

 which they scrape from beneath the snow. 



A few minutes of breathless excitement. The 

 hunter shows himself on yonder peak. The noble 

 buck trots majestically towards you, his head 

 thrown up, and his fine horns spreading far on 

 each side of his back. He stops — sniffs — starts; 

 but too late I the rifle-ball has sped, and his hoofs 

 are kicking up the blood-stained snow in dying 

 convulsions.* 



In our homely sheep, it must be confessed, the 

 utilitarian element prevails over the poetic; but 

 with the burrell, or wild sheep, of the Himalaya 

 Peaks, the case is far otherwise. Twice the size of 

 an English ram, with horns of such vastness, that 

 into the cavity of those which lie bleaching on the 

 frozen rocks, the fox sometimes creeps for shelter,t 

 dwelling in the most inaccessible regions, the 

 snow-covered ranges of the loftiest mountains in 

 the world, or the mighty spurs that jut out from 

 them, shy and jealous of the approach of man, 

 whom it discerns at an immense distance, — the 



* See " Notes on Norway," by A, C. Smith, in the M Zoologist " 

 for 1851. 

 + Hooker, " Himal. Jour.," i. p. 243. 

 58 



