Field Notes and Stalking Yarns 65 
proved equally disastrous, and the day’s proceedings ended in a blank. The head stalker’s 
stock of patience was exhausted, and three miserable men trudged down the hill towards 
the forester’s lodge, within a few hundred yards of which were feeding the usual lot of tame 
hinds. And now the head stalker found himself short of something more than patience, for 
on catching sight of these semi-domesticated hinds the great man, who had seen no deer 
that day save those that were pointed out to him, exclaimed with great excitement, “ There 
they are ! Don’t you see them ? ” and promptly squatted on the ground preparing for the 
fray. The head stalker’s measure of his “ man ” was now complete. Without deigning to 
reply, he turned round to the gillie in attendance and said quietly, “ Puir bit mannie, he 
disna ken ony better,” and away he walked. 
A word as to the crofter question — with all apologies for a parenthesis hardly 
to be avoided. Years ago, it will be remembered, there was a loud outcry by the crofters 
that they were being eaten up by the extension of the forests in Scotland, and no doubt at 
the commencement of the movement considerable suffering was occasioned in this way. 
But, happily, we have little of this nowadays. Assisted emigration and the general reduction 
of rents in the crofter districts have done much to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry ; 
and but for the feeble bleating of a few philanthropists, who credit their hearts with a 
softness that is largely due to their heads, we should probably hear no more about it. What 
these good gentlemen ask is that certain forests should be laid waste, or (as they put it) 
restored to cultivation. But what would be the good of that ? Nine-tenths of the deer 
A HIND CHARGING AT AN EAGLE THAT HAS ALIGHTED NEAR HER CALF 
K 
