The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-11-16

in the Atmospheric Conditions Which
 Affect the Deer's Sense of Smell.
 SET NOV. 14
 Which we linken human beings to sheep, in their tendency. to follow the ways one of another, rather thanstrike out on new ones with any initiative of their own, We are not meaning to pay them compliment. The sheep, in this and other of the like proverbiaI say 1ngs, Is taken for the type of a silly thing. and it's inclination to follow my-leader" blindly as an extreme il- lustration of it's lack of intelligence; but really the fact that we regard the oV1ne tendency in this way is express sive of lack of intelligence in our selves, lack of the faculty to put our selves in the place of the sheep and look at the world from their point of view. This point of view, it has to be remembered, did not have it's origin in the pastoral fields; to find it's origin and it's justification we must look to the wild sheep before demonstrication; and I do not want the sheep only to be considered-T want to take the sheep merely as the type of a gregarious, herbivorous animal which seeks it's safety from it's enemies by flight. Un- der this category the red deer comes, together with the sheep, and in both species it is evident that the follow my-leader" instinct is most valuable Imagine herd of deer in the forest. Some suspicious appearance. perhaps the head of a man and the muzzle of a rifle, is detected on the horizon by one of the herd. Immediately the deer that has seen, or has suspected, this ap- pearance starts up; others start up likewise. If the suspicion is confirmed that this is some foreign body in the forest-the deer that has detected 1t will start off to put safer distance between himself or herself (the binds belong to the more suspicious sex), and at once, without staying to ask questions, he whole of the herd will be off, following the initiative of the leader. The leader may be but some half-grown boy stag''-no matter. His lead in an affair of this kind is good enough, and the wisest and biggest of the band will take his hint with grati- tude. Every stalker knows how im- mehsely his task would be frightened if deer did not act on this "follow-my leader plan, if every deer in the herd had to be aroused to it's individual suspicious. In that case stalking would with a great deal more than half it's difficulty.
 The presence of man, the chief and almost sole danger to the red deer, as we know him in the forests of Scot land, is revealed to the deer by one of three senses-smell, sight, hearing. They are thus named in the order of their relative importance to the man who would approach the deer. Of course it may be objected that the sense Of touch is the first to inform the deer of mans approach in the case of a deer that is shot before he detects any other sign of the shooters 8 coming, but this is an objection of the hypercritical kind, not worth notice. The deer's nose is so keen that he will smell 8 man to windward of him as we'll over a mile. From all danger to Windward, therefore, he is virtually imune, and since in Scotland, he is generally found in country which a. stout man who has to walk over it will think is too mildly described as hflly, the wind winds round the angles of these hills and up their glens and val- leys in such various and opposite gusts that notice may be given to the deer s fine nostrfls of the approach of dan ger from direction that is absolutely to 1eeward, if one regards only the di- rection of the wind aloft. Thus it is that deer sometimes are said to be ly- ing between two winds"-that Is to say, at or near the point or line of contract of opposing currents. In such a position as this 1t is hardly possible to approach deer. There may be other animals with a sense of smell as keen as the red deer, but if there are do not know them. By way of some com pensation to the stalker, their eye sight is certainly not as acute as that of many other animals. It appears to be just about as good as that of man quicker, in my humble judgement, in picking up an unusual movement near at hand than a man of average kesn sight, but scarcely as far-seeing.
 It may seem strange that creature relying on flight for safety should not have developed it's sense of sight more keenly, but the apparent anomaly is explained, I think, but considering the natural conditions of the red deer's life. We see him on a bare hillside, but that is not his habitat of preference. Woodland is his natural habitat. In the woods he fares better, grows a bigger body, and a finer head than on the hill, and it is very evident that long sight is not of great value to a wood land animal. He has no long vistas in which to exercise it. On the other hand the power of detecting quickly even a very slight movement near by would obviously be most useful to an animal living in wood which abounded with foes; and this faculty the red deer has in a high degree. A peculiarity of his his vision is that he sees below him much more quickly than above. This, again, is very natural. All his food lies below him, under his eyes. The num- Der of his woodland foes for which he would have to look in the branches of the trees above him would be so incon- siderable that it might be left out of the count All his interests are below r,n ~, !, ourT1 1oua1 E211t in Goof-