91 
ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. 
Indians have found time to catch a salmon-trout or two through 
the ice of some frozen lake, or the sportsmen have brought 
down a brace or two of ruffed or Canada grouse — is roasting 
on wooden spits before the fire, with the rich gravy dripping 
on the biscuits, which are to serve thereafter as platters for 
the savory broil. Then comes the merry meal, seasoned by 
the hunters’ Spartan sauce — fatigue and hunger ; and when 
the appetites of all are satiated with forest fare, succeed the 
composing fumes of the hunter’s pipe, replenished with 4 the 
Indian weed that briefly burns,’ and such yarns as are spun 
nowhere, unless it be in a forest camp, are told. * * * 
Awake, while the stars are yet bright and the air keen and 
cold, the brook, which last night tempered the goblets, this 
morning laves the brow and replenishes the kettles, and a 
brief early breakfast precedes the quick tramp through the 
morning’s gloaming. It is a sport for men, not to be essayed 
by babes or sucklings. No particular fitness is required 
except stout thews and sinews — to be long-winded and accus- 
tomed to field exercise — and, en passant, no man roughs it 
better than a thorough-bred English gentleman; it is the 
Cockney who first gives himself airs, and everybody else 
trouble, and then gives — out!” 
The Common Deer of North America ( Cervus Virgini- 
anus ) differs entirely from all the European or Indian varieties 
of this order. It is smaller in size than the red deer — hart 
and hind of the British Isles and the European continent — 
and is far inferior to it in stateliness of character, in bearing, 
and in the size and extent of its antlers. From the fallow 
deer of Europe it differs in being much larger, and having 
branched instead of palmated horns. It is so much larger 
than the roebuck, and differs from it so greatly in all respects, 
that it is needless to enter minutely into the difference. 
This beautiful animal abounded formerly in every part of 
this continent, from the extreme northeast to Mexico, or 
still farther south, and it is even now found in consider- 
