MAMMALS. 



189 



trees being now of good size, an odd stag is again occasionally 

 seen, though the nearest forest must be quite ten miles away. 

 This shows what wanderers deer are. It is astonishing how 

 quickly a new forest stocks up. Xo doubt the clean fresh pasture 

 has something to do with this, and probably the younger deer 

 would be the first to come as permanent residents, being driven 

 off, as in the case of some birds, by the older ones from the parent 

 forest. Possibly the mortality may not be so high in the newer 

 ground, the spring of the year being very fatal to two-year-olds : 

 and wet is more hurtful to them than dry cold. 



Many years ago the stags, though fewer in number, carried much 

 better heads. As the numbers and size of forests increased so did the 

 number of stags, but the horns dwindled in size, possibly from over- 

 stocking, but this latter effect was certainly also encouraged by all 

 the good old, as well as the promising young stags being killed off, 

 few ever reaching maturity. Now, however, the area under deer is so 

 vast that the killing off all the best ones is almost an impossibility, 

 so that from this cause, as well as from hand-feeding in the winter, 

 the horns are gradually increasing in size, and much finer heads are 

 seen now than was the case some years ago. Now-a-days, also, 

 both proprietors and lessees are more careful of their forests : the 

 stags are not over-shot, the young and promising ones are left to 

 mature, and the hinds are kept within proper limits as to numbers. 

 In fact, many well-managed forests are now as well looked after 

 as grouse moors are, and although a great deal of the wild nature 

 of the sport is done away with, no doubt the stag-producing 

 capabilities of the areas under deer have been very largely in- 

 creased, as has also the size of the horns, aided, in some of the 

 higher grounds, by hand-feeding with Indian corn and hay. 



We quite well remember, some twenty or five-and-twenty years 

 ago, that a ' Royal ' was a comparative rarity, and the shooting of 

 one was mentioned with some degree of pride in the local papers. 

 In those days some eight or ten 'Royals,' perhaps, in a season, would 

 be sent to Inverness to be stuffed, and the number of heads of all 

 kinds received by the late Mr. Macleay would not be very large. 

 Now, this is changed. The heads are becoming, in many places, much 

 better, both in quality as well as the number of points. ' Royals ' 

 can be counted almost by the score : and there are always a dozen 

 or more over that number, occasionally bearing as many as fifteen 



