704 THE NATIONAL ZOO AT WASHINGTON. 



in the morning or late in the evening they come to the watering- place 

 in the open, and if alarmed there they make for the trees, raising- and 

 waving as they go the " white Hag" famous in all hunting lore. 



This conspicuous action might seem a mistake in an animal that is 

 seeking to escape unnoticed; but the sum of advantage in the habit is 

 with the deer, or he would not do it, and its main purpose will be .seen 

 in one very important and frequent situation. A mother deer has 

 detected danger; she gives a silent but unmistakable notification to 

 her fawns by raising the "danger flag," a white one in this case; and 

 then when she leads away through the woods they are enabled to keep 

 sight of her in the densest thickets and darkest nights by the aid of 

 the shining beacon, which is waxed in a way peculiar to this species, 

 and is not therefore liable to be mistaken for the white patch on any 

 other animal. 



In the sign language of the Indians the gesture for white tail deer is 

 made up of the general sign for deer, and then a waving of the flat 

 open hand with lingers up, in imitation of the banneret as it floats 

 awa} 7 through the woods. 



The form adopted for the whitetails' paddock is the result of expe- 

 rience. It was found that the animals became alarmed sometimes and 

 dashed along the invisible fences, until suddenly met Try another at 

 right angles, and in this way several were hurt; but the improved 

 plan of substituting obtuse angles, or a curve at the corners, causes 

 them to be turned aside without injury. 



One can not linger many minutes by the Virginia deer paddock 

 without seeing some of those gorgeous Asiatics, the peacocks, walking 

 about among the thicket or negotiating the wire fences with absolute 

 precision whenever it suits their purpose to do so. The original half 

 dozen birds have increased to a hundred, and the vast stretch (several 

 hundred acres for them) of broken, wooded country is so perfectly 

 suited to their needs that they give us a very good imitation of life in 

 the Indian jungle. During the winter they roam about in promiscu- 

 ous troops, but when the early spring comes and the cock is in his full 

 regalia the mating instinct prompts them to scatter, and each family 

 withdraws to a part of the jungle — the park, I mean — that is under- 

 stood to be theirs, and to defend which the cock is ready to do battle 

 with all feathered intruders. 



Close to the deer paddock is a sunny open glade that was for long 

 the special domain of one particular peacock. All about it is thick 

 shrubbery, where the soberly dressed hens might have been seen quietly 

 moving about, paying no obvious heed to their gorgeous partner, who 

 mounted habitually on a little sand bank and spread and quivered his 

 splendid jewelry in the sun, turning this way and that way to get the 

 best effect, occasionally answering the far-away call of some rival with 

 a defiant "qua," or replying to the dynamite explosions in a near 



