A friend of mine who has been in the habit of hunting deer in the Adirondack Mountains, is of opinion that the deer is often more than a match for the dog in sagacity. The deer seems to be well aware that the dog is guided by his faculty of scent in tracking him; and all the deer's efforts are directed to baffling and thwarting this keen and wonderful sense with which the dog is gifted. With this purpose, the deer will often make enormous leaps, or run around in a circle so as to confuse and puzzle his pursuers. He will mount a stone wall, and run along it for some distance, well aware that the dog cannot scent him so well on the rock as on the grass. If he can find a pond or stream of water, the deer will plunge in and swim a long distance, so that the dogs may lose his trail. It is a joyful sound to the poor hunted deer when the dogs send up that sad, dismal howl, which they give utterance to when they have lost all scent of the deer, and despair of finding it. He is then a happy deer. He hides quietly in some covert among the bushes, and he will take care to place himself where the wind will carry all odors of his body away from the direction where he supposes the dogs to be. So you see the deer is by no means a stupid animal. He knows, better than many a little boy, how to take care of himself, and get out of the way of danger. And now can you tell me in what part of the State of New York are the Adirondack Mountains? From a correspondent in Springfield, Mo., I have a letter, in which the writer says: "I suppose the Boston boys don't have deer for pets. I have a young one named Billy, and he eats corn out of my pocket. When I come home from school he always runs to meet me. Although he can jump over fences, he never tries to run away. He wears a collar with a bell on it: so we can hear him when he is down in the orchard eating apples, which he seems to be very fond of." Uncle Charles. Decoration Divider Grandma Asleep
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