Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Take a picture of the roe, and you will hardly doubt the humanity
of our sportsmen. But why talk of it thus? No one, we hope,
save a member of the Manchester manufacturing school could feel
otherwise--certainly not a genuine hills-man; and we quote the
passage simply for its extreme beauty and perfect fidelity to
nature. No creature is more beautiful than the kid of the roe-deer,
especially when seen in their rest, or moving through the ferns, on
a summer evening, beside their gentle mother the doe.
"In the bedding season the does retire into the most secret
thickets, or other lonely places, to produce their young, and
cover them so carefully that they are very rarely found; we
have, however, deceived their vigilance. There was a solitary
doe which lived in the hollow below the Bràigh-cloiche-léithe
in Tarnaway. I suppose that we had killed her 'marrow;' but I
was careful not to disturb her haunt, for she was very fat and
round, stepped with much caution, and never went far to feed.
Accordingly, when at evening and morning she came out to pick
the sweet herbs at the foot of the brae, or by the little green
well in its face, I trode softly out of her sight, and if I
passed at noon, made a circuit from the black willows, or thick
junipers, where she reposed during the heat. At last, one fine
sunny morning I saw her come tripping out from her bower of
young birches as light as a fairy, and very gay and 'canty'--but
so thin, nobody but an old acquaintance could have known her.
For various mornings afterwards I saw her on the bank, but she
was always restless and anxious--listening and searching the
wind--trotting up and down--picking a leaf here and a leaf
there, and after her short and unsettled meal, she would take a
frisk round leap into the air--dart down into her secret bower,
and appear no more until the twilight. In a few days, however,
her excursions became a little more extended, generally to the
terrace above the bank, but never out of sight of the thicket
below. At length she ventured to a greater distance, and one day
I stole down the brae among the birches. In the middle of the
thicket there was a group of young trees growing out of a carpet
of deep moss, which yielded like a down pillow. The prints of
the doe's slender-forked feet were thickly tracked about the
hollow, and in the centre there was a bed of the velvet 'fog,'
which seemed a little higher than the rest, but so natural,
that it would not have been noticed by any unaccustomed eye. I
carefully lifted the green cushion, and under its veil, rolled
close together, the head of each resting on the flank of the
other, nestled two beautiful little kids, their large velvet
ears laid smooth on their dappled necks, their spotted sides
sleek and shining as satin, and their little delicate legs as
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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