In Britain, the stag has become scarcer than it formerly was; but, in the Highlands of Scotland, herds of four or five hundred may still be seen, ranging over the vast mountains of the north; and some of the stags of a great size.

But to-day we pursue the fox; in Shakespeare's time the stag was the quarry.

We are talking of two or three hundred years ago, when the stag was the animal usually hunted by hounds on the Cotswolds and in other parts of England.

"Storms are the fruit-tree's bane; the brook's, a summer hot and dry; The stag's a woven net, a gin the dove's; Mankind's, a soft sweet maiden.

THE STAG.The stag, or hart, is the male of the red deer, and the hind is the female.

"'Ah wudden say no to a haunch o' venison,' I answered; 'but stags is artillery work.'

All the rapacious family of the cat kind, with the wolf, the dog, the eagle, and the falcon, are continually endeavouring to find her retreat, whilst the stag himself is the foe of his own offspring.

At Anet, a bronze stag, placed as a fountain in a large piece of water, was on the point of being demolished, because stags are beasts of chace, and hunting is a feodal privilege, and stags of course emblems of feodality.