HABIT AND DOMESTICATION. 303 



feeds it witliout stint and without restraint. If taken after a 

 few months old, its wildness seems ineradicable. I once caught a 

 fawn in December in the deep snow, which had become so ema- 

 ciated that it could not escape, and placed it in a comfortable 

 stall in the barn. So soon as it became warm, and recovered 

 something of its vitality, it made frantic efforts to escape. It, 

 however, soon commenced to eat, if no one was present, when it 

 recovered its strength and spirit. It was kept in the same com- 

 fortable quarters during the winter, and got in fine condition, but 

 seemed absolutely untamable, though daily efforts were made by 

 the keeper to acquire its confidence. Whenever he would go into 

 the stall and try to pet it, it would make strong efforts to escape 

 by jumping against the sides, and when it found that impossible, 

 it would turn and fight him, dealing fierce blows with its little 

 feet ; and when it was turned out in April, it seemed as wild as at 

 the first, though it had received nothing but kindness from him 

 during its four months of confinement. It hastened away to the 

 flock, and was the sleekest deer of them all, and by this means 

 it was recognized for a time, but none of them was wilder than 

 he was so long as he could be identified. 



More efforts have been made to domesticate this deer than any 

 of our other species, and generally under more favorable circum- 

 stances than my grounds afford. Some years since I visited the 

 plantation of General Harding, near Nashville, Tennessee, to learn 

 the result of his experiments. I found his parks much larger 

 than mine and the conditions much more favorable for success. 

 Here was a large, gently rolling lawn carpeted with a heavy coat 

 of blue grass, and scattered through it a great number of mag- 

 nificent old oaks, whose broad spreading branches afforded a de- 

 lightful shade everywhere. Beyond, and separated from it by a 

 low fence which the deer could easily scale, was an inclosure of 

 high rolling ground densely covered with a thicket of evergreen 

 cane and several other kinds of shrubbery, of which nearly all 

 ruminants are very fond. The grounds were well watered. 

 Here we find every condition requisite for the well being of 

 the deer, with little restraint and conditions nearly approach- 

 ing the wild state. The deer we met with in driving through 

 the grounds were wilder than most of mine, and yet they did 

 not seem alarmed when we approached them but trotted away so 

 as to keep some distance off. I learned they were reasonably 

 fertile, though not as much so as in the wild state. At the com- 

 mencement of the late war there were about eighty deer in these 



