CHAP. XXXIV. ] DEER-HOUNDS. 259 
comparatively plentiful in all the Highland districts, owing to 
the increased extent of the preserved forests and the trouble 
taken by different proprietors and renters of mountain shootings, 
who have collected and bred this noble race of dogs, regardless 
of expense and difficulties. The prices given for a well-bred 
and tried dog of this kind are so large, that it repays the cost and 
trouble of rearing him. Fifty guineas is not an unusual price 
for a first-rate dog, while from twenty to thirty are frequently 
given for a tolerable one. 
My object, however, in commencing this Chapter was not to 
enter into a disquisition concerning greyhounds, but to describe 
some of their performances, which have fallen under my own 
observation, and which I noted down at the time. 
September 22nd, 18—.—Started this morning at daybreak 
with Donald and Malcolm Mohr, as he is called (Anglicé, Mal- 
colm the Great, or big Malcolm), who had brought his two 
deer-hounds, Bran and Oscar, to show me how they could kill a 
stag. Malcolm himself is as fine a looking “lad” (of thirty-five 
years old, however) as ever stepped on the heather; a head and 
shoulders taller than Donald, who, for this reason, and I believe 
for no other, affects to treat his capabilities as a deer-stalker with 
considerable contempt, always ending any description of a sport- 
ing feat of Malcolm’s with the qualification, “Twas no that bad 
for so long-legged a chiel as you.” 
The dogs were perfect. Bran, an immense but beautifully 
made dog, of a light colour, with black eyes and muzzle; his 
ears of a dark brown, soft and silky as a lady’s hand, the rest of 
his coat being wiry and harsh, though not exactly rough and 
shaggy like his comrade Oscar, who was long-haired and of a 
darker brindle colour, with sharp long muzzle, but the same soft 
ears as Bran, which, by-the-by, is a distinctive mark of high 
breeding in these dogs. Malcolm Mohr and I took no guns 
with us; but Donald, as usual, had his old ‘“ doodle barrel,” as 
he calls it, an ancient flint-and-steel affair; the barrels by Man- 
ton, and therefore excellent when you could get them off, which 
the stock and locks, apparently the workmanship of a Highland 
carpenter and blacksmith, generally prevented me from doing, 
the triggers being inaccessible to any ordinary fore-finger, anu 
the stock about half the length of any other gun-stock that ever: 
s2 
