72 
THE FLOWERING ALMOND. 
[We have not yet had an opportunity of noticing Mrs. Fuller Maitland’s second 
book,* which requires more space for its discussion than has been at our disposal. 
The following seasonable lines may, however, be taken as a sample of the many 
charming verses to be found within its covers.— Eu., N.N.'\ 
Year after year, when Winter has gone by, 
And London’s smoke eclipses March’s sky. 
Spangling with rosy blocm the dusky air. 
Its slender branches flowery burdens bear. 
And none, methinks, did ever show more fair 
In Eastern gardens, or home pastures where 
Thrush’s soft trill and linnet’s silvery note 
Down golden alleys of warm sunlight float 
From orchard choirs, hung o’er with ruddy snow 
To listeners, pillowed on green turf below. 
Ah, lovely flowers ! Right well ye testify 
That ’twixt our sordid earth, our murky sky. 
If man so will. 
Things pure and fair and sweet may blossom still. 
RED DEER.f 
The wild red deer possesses a peculiar interest in the eyes of British natura- 
lists, from the fact that it is the largest truly wild animal left to us, and the 
remnant of the big game that our ancestors hunted for food. It is, as one of the 
authors remarks, “closely interwoven with our national life,” and the hunting 
thereof developed the best qualities of physical excellence. The stags of pre- 
historic Britain, as shown by the antlers, found in peat bogs, gravel beds and 
sands, carried much finer “heads” than their modern descendants; but even 
now the red deer is a vastly nobler beast than the fallow deer more commonly 
seen in parks. Formerly the red deer roamed from the north to the south of 
Britain, but its area has been sadly circumscribed. Only, comparatively speak- 
ing, of recent years has it disappeared from some of its former haunts. Fifty 
years ago there were wild red deer in Oxford.shire, which occasionally afforded a 
run to the Ileythrop hounds, in whose country Wychwood Forest lies. Nowa- 
days, apart from the Scottish Highlands and some parts of Ireland, it is only in 
the Exmoor district of Devon and Somerset (together with two outlying dis- 
tricts, viz., the Quantock Hills and the Stoodleigh country), Marlindale Fell in 
Westmoreland, and the New Forest, where a few head linger, that we find the 
wild red deer. The deer of some of these districts have been ably treated of by 
earlier w riters, and Mr. Macpherson, in sketching the life habits of stag and hind, 
has done wisely in dwelling chiefly upon the forest of Martindale, for “no one 
* The Saltonstall Gazette, by Ella Fuller Maitland. Chapman & Hall, Ltd. 
Brice 7s. 6d. 
t “ Inir and Feather Series.” Red Deer. Natural History, by the Rev. H. 
A. Marpber.son ; Dccr Stalking, by Cameron of Lochiel ; Stag-Hunting, by 
Viscount Ebrington ; Cookery, by Alexander Innes Shand. Bp. viii., 320, and 
8 plates. London : Longmans, 1896. Price 5s. 
