feet above the level of the sea, many of the
weaker deer died of want. Many of the stronger
deer paid the farmers visits more startling than
welcome. Observers see many rare birds through
the grey light of the late and cold mornings in
the stack-yards of the north during hard frosts,
rufous throstles and mountain snowflecks, but it
is indeed rare to see the antlers of stags and
harts among the hay and barley ricks.

The privations of the deer developed a rare
manifestation of the virtue of kindness to
animals. A Welsh gentleman to whom the
forest of Mar has been let for a term of years,
ordered a large supply of hay for the starving
deer. His good deed reminds me of a custom
of the inhabitants of Siberia, who put out a sheaf
of corn every Christmas morning for the birds,
that they too, if possible, may be merry at the
merry time.

Near Ben Muich Dhui occur the grandest
and most solitary of the Highland wealds.
Contrasting strikingly with Deeside, Banchory,
Aberdeenshire, a sheltered valley, soft and
lovely as a pleasant English vale, Deeside above
Ballater, is the country sung by Byron in his
early poetry, where he

—rov'd, a young Highlander, o'er the dark heath,
And climb'd thy steep summit, O Morven, of snow,
To gaze on the torrent that thunder'd beneath,
Or the mist of the tempest that gather'd below.

The few inhabitants of the British islands
who have seen the red deer in their native
haunts, are naturally those most astonished at
hearing of their apparitions in farm-yards.
Tourists but seldom catch glimpses of them.
Even deerstalkers, it has been truly remarked,
have often to watch as patiently through long
moonlight nights for a "sight," as anglers have
sometimes to wait through long days for a
"bite." Tourists may travel for many weeks
in the Highlands without ever seeing a herd of
deer. But they never forget the glimpses they
do obtain. They obtain these glimpses by
watching the lights and shadows as they flit over
the vastly extended scenes. Some morning
early, when travelling perchance in some of the
remotest glens of Perthshire—driving away
from blue mountains, driving towards blue
mountains, which seemingly hem them in—a
river running through the glen is revealed by
occasional gleams, larch forests clothe the mountain
slopes on either side, and near their ridges
appear green or heathery glades. Athwart
the glen the black shadows and sunbursts
seemingly chase each other; and as the golden lines
light up the green of one of the glades, high
up on the ridge against the sun a herd of deer
is seen browsing on the twigs and shrubs. The
does and fawns are scarcely heeding the distant
travellers, but the stags and the antlered hart,
magnificently set upon their mountain pedestal,
are watching the men as intently as the men
are gazing at the deer.

Hail, king of the wild, whom nature hath borne
O'er a hundred hill tops since the mists of the morn!

But a flying cloud blots out the glade with its
black shadow, and the deer have disappeared
before it has vanished.

Thou ship of the wilderness, pass on the wind,
And leave the dark ocean of mountains behind.

Travellers have often compared the passing of
deer to flashes of lightning.

The haunts of the deer in the neighbourhood
of Ben Muich Dhui were graphically described
in the fourth volume of Household Words:

"From the time we crossed the Linn of Dee to
our return to the same spot (about nine hours),
we saw no man, woman, or child, nay, not an
animal domesticated by man, nor any vestige of
human abode or labour. Travelling through
Glen-Lui-Beg, a valley about half a mile broad, walled
by the bare and steep foundations of the mountains,
with a floor to the eye level as a carpet, and
covered with luxuriant grass, frequently gay with
white and yellow flowers, or purpled with wide
beds of deep blue harebells and wild hyacinths,
which, swept about by a strong wind, rose
to defy it. But the strangest feature of the
region is the frequent apparition of huge dead
pines—skeletons of trees which must have been
dead for centuries, bleached like human bones
in the sun—sometimes lifting up a single bare
stem; sometimes stretching out two vast ghostly
arms; sometimes upholding a delicate tracery of
boughs, like the florid masonry of a cathedral's
open spire; sometimes twisted into shapes which
the eye, seeking in vain for some living thing,
interprets into forms of horse, or sheep, or
resting pilgrim. But no living creature is there;
nor roof for shelter; no sound of cow, or sheep,
or watchdog, breaks the silence; for we are
amidst the ruins of the great Caledonian Forest,
in a region, which, being devoted to a deer-park,
uncropt and unmown, is wholly desolate, except
when a herd of its lordly tenants flashes across
it."

Whilst Highland deer were starving, the
hard winter caused the poisoning of two score
of English deer in Badminton Park. In this
park there is a yew tree,

Which to this day stands single in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore.

The snow weighing down the branches of this
tree brought them within reach of the hungry
deer. But the linear, glabrous, glossy, evergreen
leaves of the dark yew tree are poisonous,
and forty of the herd died of the poison, as if
to show that the yew leaves could be as fatal as
yew bows to the cervine race.

Persons who have seen only the deer of the
parks, or have read only the descriptions of
them by poets, will be surprised to learn that
they can be very ferocious. Indeed the theory
is an entirely groundless one which supposes all
the flesh-eating animals to be instinctively fierce,
and all the fodder-eating animals instinctively
amiable. Frederick Cuvier and Pierre Gratiolet,
no mean observers, have indeeed intimated that
the very opposite opinion might be upheld, and
the proposition maintained which affirms the
greater cruelty of the solipeds and ruminants.