Red Deer 
And now for a little wander away into the bypaths of natural history, for, as I have 
said before, my special desire is to avoid here (as I have endeavoured to do in previous publi¬ 
cations) the beaten track of previous writers. The ordinary habits of wild deer have been 
already portrayed usque ad nauseam by men who know all about them and men who do not ; 
and nowhere are they more admirably set forth than in Mr. Grimble s Deer-Stalking and 
Mr. Collyns’s Chase of the Wild Red Deer , the former dealing with deer in Scotland, and the 
latter with deer in England. There is no need, therefore, to burden the world with another 
treatise on the subject. 
How does a stag swim ? That is one of the many points on which old and experienced 
“to pass elsewhere” 
stalkers disagree. During two seasons, when doing a good deal of stalking, I made it my 
business to ask this question of each of my companions on the hill, and their answers were 
about equally opposed, one half asserting that only the head and upper part of the neck are 
held clear of the water, while the other half insisted that the whole line of the back and 
shoulders appears above the surface ; only one man, and he by far the most experienced and 
observant stalker, said candidly he did not know, though he had seen them swimming 
scores of times. For my part, I feel sure that in deep water, especially when in for a long¬ 
distance swim, a stag shows nothing but his head, his mouth being just clear of the water, 
and that only on coming into the shallows preparatory to landing can any part of his body 
be seen. But the point is, I think, worth clearing up. 1 
1 In the Art of Venerie is the following quaint note on this subject : “When the harts passe the greate ryvers, or some arme 
of the sea, to go to rut in some ile or forest, they assemble themselves in great heardes, and knowing which of them is strongest 
and best swimmer, they make him go foremost, and then he which cometh next him stayeth up his heade upon the back of the 
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