Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/356

 great magnitude and importance to admit of such a solution without a more strict species of evidence; or, in defect of that evidence, of such collateral and circumstantial proofs as can be deduced from its present appearance and connections, from the probable motives in which it may have originated, and from the contrary deficiency in probability of other assigned causes. It is said that they were roads made for the purposes of hunting the deer: such are the assigned motives. Admitting them, it is necessary to examine how far this pursuit was likely to be aided by the contrivance in question. Two practices are chiefly in use in this chace. The first of these is to approach the deer while in their pasture or at rest, by such circuitous ways as to protect the hunter equally from their acute scent or their sight; a practice known by the name of deer-stalking. The other consists in driving them by a power of men or dogs, or both, in such a direction as to pass the stationed hunter, who thus shoots them in their course. Another notion has however been maintained relative to the method of hunting in this place and in those times. It has been imagined that the roads were fenced with stakes on each side, and used as a sort of decoy, into which the deer were driven, to be afterwards shot at leisure by those who were stationed without.

It is impossible to conceive that they were used as stations from whence to shoot deer at rest, since a fixed point must be unavailable in this variety of the chace, and since the exposure of the hunter himself would render the invention useless. For similar reasons they could be of no use in driving the deer, as the herds must necessarily pass in the greater number of cases so as to be out of bow shot. Although in the upper parts of the glen the distance from the lowest line to the bottom of the valley is trifling, yet at its lower part that distance becomes far greater than the range of an