S28 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
where he supposes the marksmen ambushed ; crosses the perilous 
passage at a leap, or returns upon the dogs, as in battues he turns 
upon those who beat the bushes, and whose noise ai-gues them un- 
armed with guns. 
When the decisive moment comes, he no longer hesitates, takes 
an enormous advance on the dogs, runs a league in a few minutes, 
and profits by the time that elapses before the pack can come up 
with him, to execute a stratagem long devised. 
It is some high-road or stream where he will go up and down 
again, and whence he will escape by prodigious side leaps. If he 
has much time before him, he w'ill multiply the trick and compli- 
cate it by infinite changes. Very skillful will be the whipper-in 
and the dogs who unravel all these manoeuvres. I have seen the 
roebuck forced, after hunting four or five hours, in forests where 
deer was rare, but in those where it abounds and wdiere change is 
easy, the course of this animal presents, I repeat, almost as many 
difficulties as that of the old wolf. 
Unfortunately, that very coolness which the roebuck affects in 
presence of danger, and which saves him in the course, is mortal 
to him in hunting with the gun. As he sports before the dogs, 
nothing is easier than to kill him as he runs, to fire on him un- 
der the woods in following the chase. A mere crooklegged basset 
or turnspit, with the assistance of a good marksman, wall alone bring 
down more roebucks in a fortnight than a pack of a hundred swift 
dogs in a whole season. 
The Eoebuck and Stag are not in perfect odor of sanctity with 
the liberals, and I know that fierce lovers of liberty have often 
accused these noble species as well as the turtle dove, of absolut- 
ist tendencies. 
The accusation is false. The stag, the roebuck, and all choice 
creatures, aspire like w'oman only to a single ideal, to the reign of 
harmony, to the reign of free and pure affections. If hitherto and 
among the limbic societies, the stag and roebuck have seemed to 
prefer one to another, barbarism to civilization, for instance ; if 
pure autocracy suits them better than the government of the gro- 
cer, it is because of many evils they have chosen the least. 
The lot of the royal game being incomparably milder under the 
