Game Animals of India, etc. 



Hinds of all deer are marvellously clever at conceal- 

 ing their young ; but no better instance of this trait is 

 on record than one that occurred among a small herd 

 of chital kept by Mr. W. H. Ravenscroft at Colombo, 

 Ceylon, in 1883. One of the does had given birth to 

 a fawn in a small enclosure near the house of its owner ; 

 and on the second day after the birth she was seen 

 quietly feeding between four and five in the afternoon, 

 but unaccompanied by the fawn. Mr. Ravenscroft, 

 with half-a-dozen servants entered the enclosure to 

 search for the fawn. The ground within the enclosure, 

 which was about a quarter of an acre in extent, and 

 devoid of covert, except at one end, where there were a 

 few cinnamon-bushes and a single good-sized tree, was 

 carefully examined, without any trace of the missing 

 fawn. So too, was an area of some extent outside the 

 fence (through which it was thought the fawn might 

 have crept), but with a similar result. Next morning 

 the doe and fawn were seen together. A man was set 

 to watch, who informed the owner that one atternoon 

 he saw the pair go into the bushes, and the doe come 

 out alone after a few minutes. It thus appeared that 

 for eight or ten days the mother regularly put her 

 offspring to bed about half-past four in the afternoon, 

 and concealed it so successfully that although the owner 

 knew within a few feet the place where it lay, he never 

 succeeded in finding it. 



It is well known that during the pairing season red- 

 deer stags occasionally get their antlers so locked 

 together that they are unable to extricate them and 

 thus perish miserably. It might have been thought 

 that the simple form of the antlers of the chital would 

 not lend themselves to such interlocking ; but that this 

 is not the case is proved by a pair of skulls picked up 

 many years ago in the Central Provinces, in which the 

 antlers were immovably locked. 



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