150 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
to see them bounding through the tall brackens in the depths 
of the old oak-wood. Mr Chouler, the Duke’s gamekeeper, 
tells me the bucks begin with great regularity to “bellow” 
on or about the 9th of October, and by the middle of the 
month they may be heard grunting in all directions. During 
still moonlight nights the park then resounds with their 
hoarse voices, the general effect being sufficiently wild, in my 
estimation, to afford genuine pleasure to the naturalist. The 
first fawns are almost invariably dropped on 16th June. The 
number of Fallow Deer in the Hopetoun park at present is 
only 140; fifteen years ago they numbered fully 250. In 
the Biel park there are between 200 and 300, and I under- 
stand the Dalmahoy park contains about the same number. 
These herds, which contain both spotted and uniformly dark 
animals, of course serve a useful as well as an ornamental 
purpose, and furnish their owners and the game-dealers 
with a constant supply of excellent venison. 
In 1889 I observed Fallow Deer in Eshielshope, near 
Peebles, on the property of Sir John Hay, Bart. They were 
introduced, I am told, forty-two years ago, and at one time 
numbered nearly two hundred, but lately they have been 
killed down owing to their destroying young trees and 
adjoining farm crops, and now only about a dozen remain. 
So far as I am aware, the date of the introduction of the 
Fallow Deer into the district is not known. We have 
positive knowledge of it, however, as far back as 1283, for 
which year the accounts of the king’s chamberlain record, 
among other expenses connected with the royal park at 
Stirling, an allowance for mowing and carrying hay and 
litter for the use of the Fallow Deer in winter (Cosmo 
Innes’s “Scotland in the Middle Ages,” p. 125). From an 
observation made by Walker in his “Mammalia Scotica,” 
which is supposed to have been written between 1764 and 
1774, it appears that Fallow Deer have been kept in 
Hopetoun park for at least a couple of centuries. The white 
and the black varieties, he tells us, had existed there for 
sixty years without intermingling, until the mottled form 
was introduced, from which time all three forms brought 
forth young differing in colour from their own kind. He 
