200 
WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WA YS 
CHAP. 
according to the quality of its pasturage and its 
protection from the severity of climate. Nothing 
can improve by suffering; all pain and privation 
must have an adverse effect upon animals or 
human beings ; therefore the destruction of forests 
in the Highlands of Scotland has not only 
deprived the deer of shelter, but has destroyed 
the plants upon which they depended for their 
winters food. Foreigners are struck by the 
absurdity of the misnomer “a deer-forest” in 
Scotland, upon hills that are completely devoid of 
trees. 
It is much to be regretted that the red-deer 
of Great Britain are no longer the grand animals 
which they continue to be in other parts of 
Europe. The trophy of a fine head is the 
reward for a painstaking stalk and a successful 
shot; but there are no heads in Scotland that 
are worthy of the name, as specimens of the 
antlers of red-deer. 
As I have already remarked, the develop¬ 
ment of every animal will depend upon the 
favourable conditions of localities; as the red- 
deer has deteriorated in Scotland, it may have 
improved in other countries. I regard the 
wapiti of America as the red - deer upon a 
gigantic scale. If a wapiti stag were placed 
in a line with a fine German, and a Scotch red- 
deer, there would be an immense difference in 
size, but they would look like the same animal 
in gradations; there would be about the same 
