Both kinds of animals are cruel. The gentle-
looking giraffes have a perfidious propensity for
trampling their keepers under their forefeet.
When molested by a dog, the graceful and stately
stag of the parks has been known to allow the
dog to come within reach, and then, bounding
and drawing his four feet together, to alight
upon the dog's back and crush him to death.

Sir Thomas Lauder Dick tells an anecdote in
point: A friend of his, wishing to sketch a distant
view of Cullen House, seated himself under
a large tree at the far end of the park. Whilst
he was intently busy with his sketch, he was
suddenly alarmed by hearing a huge stag pawing
and stamping, and by seeing him stoop his royal
head of horns and step slowly back preparatory
to charging. There was not an instant to be
lost. Throwing down his sketch-book and drawing
pencils, the sketcher started up, sprang at a
bough over his head, and coiled himself in it,
with an alacrity and agility astonishing even to
himself. But the stag, disappointed of his
charge, was not easily got rid of, for he
continued to keep watch and ward over his prisoner
in the tree for two or three hours. If, instead
of being an innocent student of drawing, the man
in the tree had been a stag-hunter, caught without
dog or gun, there might have been some
poetical justice in this man-hunting by a stag.
But the situation was very disagreeable to the
sketcher, the spot being lonely, relief unlikely,
night coming on, and reinforcements of horns
possible, or even a change of guard! At last,
however, the stag sulkily and slowly, but not
without a backward glance, retired. The hunted
man, it need scarcely be said, displayed once
more his alacrity in picking up his drawing
materials, and his agility by scaling the park
wall without stopping to complete his sketch.

Bewick records an experiment which William,
Duke of Cumberland, made on the courage of the
red deer. "Some years ago the duke caused a
tiger and a stag to be enclosed in the same area;
and the stag made so bold a defence that the
tiger was at length obliged to give up."

The red deer, or roebuck, is said, on the
authority of Leland, to have been plentiful
during the reign of Henry the Eighth, on the
Cheviot Hills. In the time of Queen Elizabeth,
they were still found, says Tennant, after Dr.
Mouffet, in the mountains of Wales. For
centuries they have been described as extinct in
England, and yet one of the peculiarities
reported of the past severe winter is the chase of
a red deer in Yorkshire. This stag is supposed
to have made his way, during the snow-storms,
from Scotland. In February he was hunted by
the Easingwold staghounds. The huntsmen and
hounds had a splendid run after him from
Newburgh Park to the Derwent, some miles below
Malton, where he gave his pursuers the slip by
plunging into the river. He was afterwards
seen in the woods in the neighbourhood of
Castle Howard, and then seems to have chosen
Bossal Wood, on the Derwent, as his haunt. On
Wednesday, the eighth of March last, there was
a great gathering of squires and grooms, hunters
and hounds, or what is called a large field, at
Bossal Wood. The stag soon started away for
the wolds, and the field after him in full cry
—the huntsmen shouting, the hounds barking.
The country was extremely difficult, and the
stag crossed the Driffield Railway twenty
minutes a-head of the field. Only one hound of
them all had been able to keep up with him.
Further on he would have taken shelter in a
shed, but there chanced to be two young
foxhounds in it, which started him off again. Away
once more all went towards the sea. The stag,
however, prior to reaching the sea, turned
towards the Holderness country, and after
skirting Wartre, was at length pulled down by
the dogs at Nunburnholme, near Market Leighton.
Fifty miles in five hours and five minutes
is the estimated run of this stag for its life!
On the morrow he was conveyed back by train
to Easingwold, and put into the deer-yard there.
He is said to have looked little the worse for
his fatigues, and is reserved for another run on
a future day.

Fallow roe and red deer are all kept
together in Scotch parks, and it is possible
enough that one of the red stags may have
wandered southwards as far as Yorkshire. If he
has any national canniness in him, he will find
his way back again, especially if it be true that
he once escaped by swimming out to sea, until
it was thought he was drowned, and if, as
alleged, he has been fished out of the sea four
times. This red stag, a Samson in the sport he
affords, is certainly a striking contrast to the
poor creatures with horns tricked out in ribbons,
which leap over the eastern esplanade of Brighton
or seek refuge in shops at Windsor.

The red stag of Easingwold is not a wild, but
a park deer. Even the deer of Lochiel, but a
few years ago, before the oak and pine forest at
the foot of Loch Arkaig was cut down, the
most numerous herds in Scotland, have lost
somewhat of their wildness. A small wooded
island there has for ages been the burying-
ground of the Camerons. And at early dawn a
pedestrian on the footpath along the lake, might
sometimes get a glimpse of a specimen of these
red deer, or startle from their covert a pair of
roe deer; but the truly wild deer must be
sought for further from the abodes of men. On
the west coast, where roads there are none, and
but few shepherds' huts, near lakes such as
Loch Affrick and Loch Beneiveian, surrounded
by the remains of ancient pine forests, and with
islands almost impervious from the stems of
trees, the dun deer are still numerous, contending
in hereditary feuds, as of yore, with their
natural enemies, the eagles. For the red stag
is there at home, and black peaks on barren
rocks towering above black waves, furnish the
brown eagles of these coasts with many suitable
eyries. The mountains of Ruadhstach and
Murscodh, in Skye, are favourite haunts of the
red deer, and so steep and perilous are they,
that the farmers are obliged to restrict their
stock to wedders and goats.

The inhabitants of lonely huts near the haunts