THE YOUNG DEER 125 



At all stages of its life-history the red-deer is 

 a beautiful animal, and but for one thing a fair 

 case might be made for the assertion that this 

 first stage is the most beautiful of all. The deer 

 has then much of the exquisite and delicate grace 

 of form of the gazelle. The body is not much 

 larger than that of a good-sized hare, and the 

 skin has a velvety smoothness and gloss which 

 quickly diminishes. It is marked throughout with 

 fallow-like spots, which also disappear early in 

 life, but at this stage speak very plainly of a 

 remote spotted ancestry. As is the case with the 

 young of the horse, however, so with the young of 

 the deer : the legs are a trifle disproportionately 

 large for the body, though this is a defect which 

 hardly diminishes the exceeding grace of the 

 animal's movements. 



Scrope's assertion that a deer which has onoe 

 followed its dam for ever so small a space will 

 never follow human beings might be questioned. 

 The fear of man, which certainly is not innate hi 

 the very young animal, though it rapidly develops 

 in it as it accompanies its dam and catches up 

 her alarms, is easily overcome in later life, 

 especially in the case of the hinds. In the forest 

 referred to, as in most others, winter feeding is 

 provided, and many of the immature hinds keep 

 about the customary feeding-place throughout the 

 summer. During our search for calves we had 

 to pass this place, and in order to entertain and pos- 

 sibly surprise me, the keeper blew a shrill whistle 

 on his fingers. In any other part of the forest 

 such a sound would set every deer within a mile on 



