Notwithstanding his lumbering, blundering ways, when the stag is abroad in search of the doe, you may see that he is endowed with a sense and faculty so exquisite as to make it appear almost miraculous in the sureness of its action. The void air, as he sweeps droning through it, is peopled with subtle intelligences, which elude and mock and fly from him, and which he pursues until he finds out their secret. They mock him most, or, to drop the metaphor, he is most at fault, on a still sultry day when {72} not a breath of air is stirring. At times he catches what, for want of better knowledge, we must call a scent, and in order to fix the direction it comes from he goes through a series of curious movements. You will see him rise above a thorny thicket, or a point where two hedges intersect at right angles, and remain suspended on his wings a few inches above the hedge-top for one or two minutes, loudly humming, and turning by a succession of jerks all round, pausing after each turn, until he has faced all points of the compass. This failing, he darts away and circles widely round, then returning to the central point suspends himself as before. After spending several minutes in this manner, he once more resumes his wanderings. Several males are sometimes attracted to the same spot, but they pass and repass without noticing one another. You will see as many as three or four or half a dozen majestically moving up and down at a hedge-side or in a narrow path in a hazel copse, each beetle turning when he gets to the end and marching back again; and altogether their measured, stately, and noisy movements are a fine spectacle. A slight wind makes a great difference to him: even a current of air so faint as not to be felt on the face will reveal to him the exact distant spot in which the doe is lurking. The following incident will serve to show how perfect and almost infallible the sense and its correlated instinct are, and at the same time what a clumsy, blundering creature this beetle is. [Sidenote: Seeking a mate]