Page:King Edward VII. as a sportsman by Watson, Alfred Edward Thomas.djvu/261

 of his visit. Nor did he neglect, when he returned some years later to the house, to go and inquire at the gardener's cottage for the little invalid.

But to return to Balmoral, and the sport that it afforded His Majesty and his guests when he came year by year to take toll of the red-deer. The forest holds a stock of about 800 stags and 500 hinds. For this large proportion of stags to hinds Balmoral is famous, and it is a subject about which naturalists should have something to say. It is possibly due to the rough surface of the greater part of the forest, and to the great heights to which it attains, or to the absence of excessive moisture on the surface. But whatever the cause, from the sportsman's point of view it is a most desirable condition. The average number of stags killed in the forest yearly is between eighty and ninety. The record year was 1904, when ninety-five were killed.

The first stag killed by King Edward in Balmoral Forest was on the 21st September 1858, on Conachcraig, in Glen Gelder; its weight was 14 st. 12 lb. The Prince of Wales, as he was then, was under seventeen years old, and it is not difficult to imagine the elation which the boy must have felt when the puff of smoke drifted from the muzzle of his rifle and disclosed the quarry lying stretched on the hillside. It was a moment that would never fade from his memory. A throne might await him, and an empire's love, but that supreme moment could never be repeated. Mr. John Grant, who was head stalker on Balmoral for many years, was with the young Prince