Ft. In. 1 5 1 1 1 6

Ft. In.

2 10

2

4

1 10

2 0

1 1

1

6

1 3

The angles are as sharp and well defined as those of the pillars of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, and their colour is generally black, the inclination to yellow being confined to the external sides, which are exposed to, and in some degree bleached by the action of the sun, rain, and wind. The texture of their substance much resembles, and is probably the same as the Icelandic agate. Professor Bergman was divided in opinion, whether these pillars were produced by fire acting upon particnlar substances, or whether subterraneous fires, sending forth vapour, may have softened the superincumbent earth, which becoming soft, and yielding to the force below, ascended in this peculiar form, and became gradually perrified. This latter supposition met the ideas of Von Troil, who illustrates it by saying, he has observed the distinct and regular appearance alluded to in dried clay, and even starch, when dried in a bason. For," adds the latter, it may be demonstrated that they are not crystals formed by nature, by their not being produced as all other crystals are, by external apposition (per appositionem), nor in any other matrix, as is common among crystals." He further observes, "The following may, however, serve as a proof that I did not, without due foundation, believe them to be a kind of lava, which burst in growing cold and hard. First, you find both in the island of Staffa, and many other places, that the pillars stand on lava or tufa, and are surrounded by this matter. Secondly, at Staffa there was a large stratum above the pillars, in which there were many pieces of those pillars irregularly thrown one among another, which leaves us to conjecture that they must have been more in number, and higher, after an old eruption of fire; but that a subsequent eruption had overthrown them and mixed them with the whole mass."

STA'FFISH. a. (from staff.) Stiff; harsh. STAFFORD, a borough and the county town of Staffordshire, governed by a mayor, with a market on Saturday, and manufactures

of cloth and shoes. A castle was built here by William the conqueror, which was garrisoned by the troops of Charles 1. and being taken, was demolished by order of the parliament. It has two parish-churches, and a fine square market-place, in which is the shire-hall, and under it is the market-house. In 1801 the inhabitants amounted to 3898. It is seated on the river Sow, 34 miles E.N.E. of Shrewsbury, and 135 N.W. of London. Lon. 2. 4 W. Lat. 52. 48 N.

STAFFORDSHIRE, a county of England, 55 miles long and 42 broad; bounded on the W. by Shropshire, N. W. by Cheshire, N.E. and E. by Derbyshire, S.E. by Warwickshire, and S. by Worcestershire. It contains 780,800 acres; is divided into five hundreds, and 181 parishes; has one city and 19 market-towns; and sends 10 members to parliament. The number of inhabitants in 1801 was 239,153, and in 1811 was 296,523. See POPULATION. The principal rivers are the Trent, Dove, Sow, Churnet, Stour, Peak, and Manyfold. The soil in the S. part is good and rich, though not without heaths, which take up a large tract of ground: it abounds in coal and iron. The middle is level and plain; the N. hilly and barren, being full of heaths and moors, and where they use peat for fuel. There are also good stone quarries, plenty of alabaster, and limestone. This county is famous for its potteries, and for the iron trade in all its varieties.

STAG, or RED DEER, in zoology. See CERVUS. The stag and hind are the male and female of this tribe, as the buck and doe are of the fallow deer. The latter are mostly natives of parks, and bred for domestic purposes, producing venison for the table; the former are the majestic inhabitants of those extensive tracts called forests and chases, where they are preserved for the purpose of being hunted. The stag, individually surveyed, is one of the grandest and most stately figures in the animal creation. His form is the most beautiful that can be conceived; the elegance of his figure, the commanding effect of his stature, the flexibility of his frame, the elasticity of his limbs, the velocity of his motion, enormity of his strength, in conjunction with the impression made upon the mind by the grandeur of the antlers, branching over his brow, all seem calculated to render him an object of equal attraction and reverence.

The red deer, formerly so plentiful in remote parts of England, in the Highlands of Scotland, and about the Lake of Killarney, in Ireland, are now but very rarely to be found in a wild and unpreserved state any where. They have disappeared with the gradual disappearance of the primæval shades they inhabited. Stags, or hinds, were then found singly, and hunted or pursued by those who happened to find them; but now in the Forest of Windsor, and the New Forest in Hampshire, where they are bred and protected for the royal chase, they assemble together; and upon Ascot Heath, near Swinley Lodge, (the official residence of

the master of his majesty's stag hounds,) may be seen the largest herd in the king's domi

nions.

The colour of both stag and hind is a dingy red, with darker tints about the eyes and mouth down the upper part of the neck, and over the points of the shoulders, is a shade of dark brown, bordering upon black: the countenance is commandingly expressive: the eye beautifully brilliant, and worthy of the poets notice; and the senses of smelling and hearing equal to those of any animal of this country. When in the least alarmed, the position of the stag is most majestic; he raises his head to the highest pitch, erects his ears, swells his neck, extends his nostrils, and snuffs the air, as if in curious, and impatient investigation of the cause by which it was occasioned. Let the alarm be what it may, he never takes to sudden flight, without first measuring, by his eye and ear, the magnitude of the danger, when he proceeds accordingly. If dogs be not of the party, men, cattle, or carriages, seem to give him little or no concern; for, after turning twice or thrice, to take a repeated survey with a kind of confused admiration, he moves off very deliberately, without any discovery of

terror.

The pairing season among the deer tribe (see RUTTING TIME) commences at the latter end of August and beginning of September, and terminates in the beginning or middle of October; depending, in that respect, a little upon the state of the season, and the age of the different head of deer; those of two and three years old being backwarder, and of course extending the time beyond that of older deer. From conception to parturition, the hind goes nearly nine lunar months; producing in the last week in May, or one of the two first in June. Immediately after impregnation, she separates herself from the stag; no subsequent intercourse takes place; even common association ceases; and nothing during the period of gestation ensues but mutual and marked indifference. The hind is seldom or never known to produce more than one, (which is called a calf:) this she deposits in the most remote and best sheltered spot she can procure for the purpose of protection from its numerous enemies, amongst whom there is none more determined or malicious than the sire himself. Mysterious as this may appear, it is an unexaggerated fact; and the dam, perfectly conscious of the stag's unnatural propensity, is more industrious to conceal the calf's retreat from him than from all the rest of its other enemies.

The calf, when once it is of strength sufficient to accompany its dam, never leaves her side during the first summer; and through the ensuing winter, none but the hinds, and males under a year old, remain together; the annual separation between the stags and hinds invariably taking place as before described. During the months of infancy, the courage of the dam, in defence of her offspring, is truly astonishing: she opposes every force, encounters every ene

my, braves every danger, and hazards her ow life to insure the safety of her young. The hind has but little protection upon the score of self-preservation, nature having left her without horns, those useful and ornamental weapons with which the stag is so powerfully armed. The first year the male has no horns; the second they are straight, and single; the third, they shew two branches; the fourth, three; the fifth, four; and the sixth, five; when the stag is reckoned complete, and at his full growth; notwithstanding this, the antlers continue to increase till there are six or seven on each side; and though the age of the deer is mostly ascertained by the number, yet this is not a certain criterion; and we may form a better judgment from the thickness and size of the trunk or body by which they are sustained.

These horns, enormous as they appear, are shed annually, which happens in the latter end of February, or during the month of March; of which there is a most perfect regeneration before the commencement of the rutting time, when the males fight for the hind with the most determined and incredible ferocity. After the season of rutting, the stags having been found too weak to stand long before the hounds, the operation of castration was adopted; and the stag thus deprived of the means of propagation, feeling no stimulative propensity to copulate, is never debilitated, but always ready for the field, and affords runs of great and equal duration at every season. Thus operated upon, they are called heaviers; and it is a remarkable fact, that if a stag be castrated while his antlers are in a state of perfection, they will never exfoliate: on the contrary, if the operation be performed when the head is bare, the horns will never return.

STAG, in cocking, the term for a young game cock during his second year. Through the whole of the first year, he is called a chicken; from which time to the completion of the second, he is a stag; and thenceforward, a cock. In regular matches and mains for considerable sums of money, very few are brought to pit before they are of the last age; unless it is made, and so agreed on both sides, in which case it is called a stag main, or main of stags. See COCKING, GAME COCK, and Cock-PIT ROYAL.

STAG-EVIL. Convulsive disorder of the tetanus genus, to which horses, of the draught kind more particularly, are subject: it often attacks without the least previous indication. The extensor muscles become instantaneously contracted, and the head is raised to its utmost height, the jaws are fixed, the neck stiff and immoveable, the eyes turned upwards, leaving only the whites visible; the palpitations of the heart are exceedingly violent, and the laborious heavings of the flank incessant. This disorder, difficult as it is in its cause to define, is always more or less dangerous in proportion to the mildness or severity of the attack. If it proceed from a profuse flux of blood to the brain, in consequence of too great and powerful exertions, plentiful bleeding, and calomel purga

tives, will be the most expeditious and likely means to relieve.

When its symptoms are so exceedingly severe and alarming, that the jaws are locked, and no medicines can be administered by the mouth, recourse must be had to collateral aids. Strong hot fomentations, with a decoction of aromatic garden herbs, under the jaws, behind the ears, and both sides the throat, followed by fumigations from myrrh, aminoniacum, and assafoetida, grossly powdered, and sprinkled upon a hot iron, or fire-shovel, held below the nostrils; glysters of gruel, in which valerian root has been boiled, and assafoetida dissolved, with an addition of liquid laudanum and olive oil to each, and repeated frequently; are the only means, properly persevered in, that can afford any hope or expectation of success.

STAG-HUNTING: hunting the red-deer with a pack of hounds kept for the express purpose. "At the present day," observes Mr. Daniel, " as an object of chase to the sportsman, the stag requires but cursory mention: those, indeed, who are fond of pomp and parade in hunting, will not accede to this opinion; but the only mode in which this chase can recommend itself to the real sportsman, is, when the deer is looked for, and found, like other game which hounds pursue. At present very few hounds, except those of the royal establishment, are kept exclusively for this amusement; and were the king once to see a fox well found, and killed handsomely, he would, in all probability, give a decided preference in favour of fox-hounds; for what a marked difference is there between conveying, in a covered cart, an animal, nearly as big as the horse that draws it, to a particular spot, where he is liberated, and cheerly riding to the covert side with all the ecstacy of hope and expectation!

The most impassioned stag-hunter must confess, that no part of his chase admits of poetic description. The only variety he can fairly expect depends upon the wind and the temper of the deer, who, by being either sulky, or not in condition to maintain a contest with the hounds, (to whom he leaves a burning scent, that gives them no trouble in the pursuit,) shortens or extends his gallop; but there is none of the enthusiasm of hunting, which the sportsman feels, when he is following an animal, upon whose own exertions of speed and craftiness his life is staked; and where no stoppages, but the checks arising from the two sources above mentioned, intervene."

STAG HOUNDS are on this account very rarely kept, and the sport but little known in many parts of the kingdom: those of most celebrity are the royal establishment upon Ascot Heath, in Windsor Forest, (see KING's HOUNDS;) the earl of Derby's, near the Downs, in Surrey; and the subscription pack near Enfield Chase. One great inducement to hunt with stag hounds, is, the certainty of sport, that first object of desire, and not to be insured by a hunt of a different description; another inducement is the gratification of

going off with the pack, and covering a scope of country, without perpetual interruption from intervening coverts, where checks, faults, delays, and a repetition of wood riding, so often ensue. Yet stag-hunting, also, has its difficulties, and is by no means a tame pursuit: it is throughout its whole course severe and arduous; laborious to the horse, and in many cases not less so to the rider: obstacles often occur which require great exertions in the one, and great fortitude in the other, and none but those who are resolved to surmount them can lay at all by the side of the hounds.

The scene of turning out the deer is peculiarly grand and impressive. Unless an outlying deer is drawn for, and found in the neighbouring woods, as is sometimes the case, a stag, hind, or heavier, is carted from the paddocks of his majesty at Swinley Lodge, (where they are previously and properly fed for the chase,) and brought at a certain hour, (generally ten o'clock in the morning,) to the place appointed, of which the surrounding neighbourhood have been sufficiently informed. At the distance of a quarter or half a mile from the covered convenience containing the deer, are the hounds, surrounded by the huntsman and his assistants, (called yeoman-prickers,) in scarlet and gold; a part of these having French horns, and upon which they must be good performers.

In a very short time after the hour agreed on, his majesty is seen to approach, attended by the master of the horse, and equerries in waiting; it being the official duty of the master of the stag-hounds to be with them, and ready to receive the king when he arrives. As soon as his majesty resigns his hack, and is remounted for the chase, the huntsman receives a signal from the master of the hounds to liberate the deer. The signal is obeyed at a moment, and the usual law, amounting to about ten minutes, is allowed for the stag's going way during which interval the sonorous strains of the horns, the musical melodious echo of the hounds, the mutual gratulations of so distinguished an assemblage, and the affability of the sovereign to the loyal subjects who surround him, form a repast truly rich and luxurious to the feelings of the genuine stag-hunter.

A removal of the horse that heads the leading hound at length gives a loose to the body of the pack; and happy he who can lay the nearest to them. Upon the deer's going off from the cart, two of the yeoman-prickers start likewise, in such directions to right and left, as not readily to lose sight of the line he takes; by which means they get five or six miles forward to assist in stopping the hounds at any particular point where they happen to run up to them were it not indeed for such precaution, not half nor even a third part of the horsemen would ever see the hounds again in the course of the day.

The joyous burst, and jealous velocity of every hound, followed by upwards of a hundred horsemen, all in action at a single view;