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[Illustration:  AN EFFECTIVE MILITARY MANOEUVRE.

“The day of cocked hats and plumes is past and gone.  This head-dress is utterly unsuited for active service.”—­Military Correspondent’s Letter to Times.

SUGGESTION, IN CONSEQUENCE, FOR NEW COSTUME FOR GENERAL OFFICERS—­SO THAT THEY MIGHT BE MISTAKEN BY THE ENEMY FOR HARMLESS GENTLEMEN-FARMERS ENGAGED IN AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS.]

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STALKING THE SAGACIOUS STAG.

SPORTING NOTES FROM OUR SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE.

I had an invite from JEPSON, a Stock Exchange acquaintance, who has rented a Moor for the winter months, and who, happening to hear that I and my two foreign friends were in the neighbourhood, most kindly asked me to come and have a look at his box, and bring them with me.

“I hear,” he writes, “that the deer are very lively, and if you want to show your foreign friends some first-rate British Sport, you can’t do better than bring them.”

Need I say that I jumped at this.  Coming along on the top of the coach, that takes us to Spital-hoo, the place my friend has rented, I have been endeavouring to describe what I imagine to be the nature of the sport of Deer-stalking to the Chief and the Bulgarian Count.  The former, who has been listening attentively, says that, from my description, stalking a stag must be very much the same as hunting the double-humped bison in Mwangumbloola, and that the only weapon he shall take with him will be a pickaxe.  I have pointed out to him that I don’t think this will be any use, as in deer-stalking I fancy you follow the stag at some distance, but he seems resolute about the pickaxe, and so, I suppose, I must let him have his way.  The Bulgarian Count was deeply interested in the matter, and says that evidently the proper weapon to use is a species of quick-firing, repeating Hotchkiss, and that he has one now on its way through Edinburgh, the invention of a compatriot, that will fire 2700 two-ounce bullets in a minute and a-half.  I fancy, if he uses this, he will surprise the neighbourhood; but, of course, I have not said anything to interfere with his project.

[Illustration]

We have arrived at Spital-hoo all safe and sound, and JEPSON has given us a most cordial welcome.  But I must now have once more recourse to my current notes.

I have now been something like five hours on the tramp, plodding my way through a deep glen in a pine forest, but have not yet come across any sign of a stag, I started with the Chief and the Count, but the former soon went off at a tangent somewhere on his own hook, and the latter, who had got his Hotchkiss with him and found it heavy work to drag it up and down the mountain paths, I have left behind to take a rest and recuperate himself.  I pause in my walk and listen.  The forest is intensely still.  Not a sign of a stag anywhere.