HABIT AND DOMESTICATION. 305 



bucks for my own table. I had observed two or three does that 

 generally had two fawns at a birth which appeared vigorous and 

 healthy, while the other does that survived became or always had 

 been barren. I think I may safely express the opinion that from 

 a few exceptional individuals that could bear domestication and 

 who were capable of imparting similar vigor to their descend- 

 ants, I have obtained a stock of Virginia Deer, which though not 

 as prolific b}^ any means as the wild deer, are still moderately so 

 and have sufficient vigor to insure the success of my experiment, 

 while the descendants of ninety per cent, of those taken from 

 the wild state will degenerate in domestication, so that in a few 

 generations they will become extinct. This want of vigor does 

 not show itself so much in the first stock as in the second and 

 third generation, while but very few will reach the fourth gen- 

 eration. I am now passing the fifth winter with what I may 

 call vigorous fawns, none of which have died from an appar- 

 ent want of vigor, as was the case before, so that my stock has 

 actually increased, while I have supplied my table abundantly 

 with venison from the bucks. A majority of the does are still bar- 

 ren, but this I deem fortunate, for they are not giving me en- 

 feebled descendants to perj)etuate for a time a stock which cannot 

 bear domestication. However, a part of the barrenness of one 

 year may probably be attributed to my attempt to force a cross 

 between the Virginia does and the black-tailed buck, to effect 

 which I kept quite a number of the does in one of the parks with 

 that buck alone, but none of them had fawns, and my experiment 

 was a failure. Indeed, the buck paid no more attention to the 

 does, so -far as we could observe, than did the Southdown ram 

 in the same inclosure. Each would drive a doe from coveted 

 food with equal rudeness. 



The want of vigor and reproductive powers in the deer are prob- 

 ably due, to some extent at least, to the want of arboreous food, 

 of which the Virginia Deer have to a large extent been deprived. 

 However, a want of proper food is not the sole cause of the dete- 

 rioration produced by domestication. The confinement which 

 prevents them from roaming abroad, the want of exercise, and 

 the absence of that constant vigilance, prompted by the instinct 

 of self preservation to avoid enemies, no doubt, have a large in- 

 fluence to produce the result I have observed. But we may not 

 be able to wholly explain why it is that a considerable propor- 

 tion of the Common Deer taken from the wild state and subjected 

 to the influence of domestication, so deteriorate as to become 



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