possible to avoid it. But the story is after all
mere machinery for introducing the deer-stalking adventures and other incidents of High- land sport. These are told with much animation and descriptive power, and will attract, if not sportsmen, at all events that very large class of readers who would like to become sportsmen if they had the opportunity
and the means. The book also gives a glimpse of a very curious state of society, when the illegality of an action by no means made it dis- graceful. Gentlemen did not keep an illicit still, because distilling was a trade—bat sporting was a gentlemanly pursuit, so they poached un- scrupulously. Something of this, however, must be attributed to the
exorbitant rights claimed by the owners of "a forest," and the con- sequent jealousy of the neighbouring proprietors. The owners of forests denied the right of their neighbours to kill deer on their awn lands, and they retorted by killing deer even in the forest. Forest Sketches is a handsome volume, with some good illustrations.
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