Virginia Deer 



outward and then upward, the tips curving in again toward 

 one another, there is a short upright spike near the base, beyond 

 which the beam gives off two upright branches making three 

 nearly equal prongs. At no point does the antler branch 

 dichotomously. 



Range. Eastern North America, separable into several geographical 

 varieties and represented westward to the Pacific by other closely 

 related races. (See below.) 



The Virginia deer in one or other of its varieties was originally 

 spread abundantly over our entire country, but the encroachments of 

 agriculture upon the wilderness, the inroad of the lumberman, the fire 

 which ever travels in his wake and the spread of towns and cities 

 have driven the deer from a large portion of their former range and 

 sadly decreased their numbers elsewhere. Such conditions now pre- 

 vail through many parts of Pennsylvania where the devastation of the 

 lumbermen and the ruin of the magnificent primeval forest are 

 occurrences of yesterday. Farther north and south, in wilds as yet 

 untouched, the deer still hold their own, and in New Jersey a few 

 remain, thanks to the inhospitable pine barrens and impenetrable 

 swamps, as well as to wise legislation properly enforced. 



In New England within the last few years these beautiful 

 creatures have ventured to return and dwell again in the haunts 

 of their ancestors, wherever the destruction worked by civilization has 

 not been too severe. Wise laws passed for their protection have 

 yielded good results more quickly than the most sanguine could 

 have hoped. 



In 1853 Thoreau wrote: "Minot says his mother told him 

 she had seen a deer come down the hill behind her house and cross 

 the road and meadow in front. Thinks it may have been eighty years 

 ago." Evidently Thoreau supposed that that wild deer seen in 

 Concord about 1770 was one of the last of its race ever to visit 

 that part of the country. Yet if he had lived to be an old man 

 he might frequently have seen them, if not at Concord, at least 

 at other spots in New England from which they were supposed 

 to have been driven forever. Not the pampered stock bred in game 

 preserves, but the sturdy descendants of the native wild deer that the 

 red men hunted through rough forests when the whole country be- 

 longed to them alone. 



Now they may be seen in quiet country places in various parts of 

 New England, browsing at the edge of leafy woodlands or resting in 



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