400 APPENDIX B 



eight miles long there may have been half as many more we 

 did not see during our week's stay on the island. Relays of 

 charcoal-burners armed with Gras rifles had been continually 

 shooting since the war ; and unless they have since found the 

 paucity of goats has made the game not worth the candle, 

 they have probably now exterminated them also. 



Now as to the fallow-deer. I had applied through our 

 Legation at Athens for a special permit to shoot one or two 

 bucks, and to the consul at Patras for further information. 

 The latter wrote : — 



" The exact spot where fallow-deer are (or rather were) to 

 be found is Pandelimona, a few miles on the Missolonghi side 

 of Astaco ; but it is certainly not worth your while to make 

 the attempt. I am fond of shooting myself, and we used 

 occasionally to see a fallow-deer in that neighbourhood about 

 fifteen years ago, but since then, notwithstanding the pro- 

 hibition, the Greek peasants have wellnigh exterminated the 

 species, as they are armed with breech-loading Gras rifles. 

 All last season, say from the middle of November to the end 

 of March, the oflficers of the British fleet, who go through a 

 torpedo course in a little bay near Pandelimona, roamed aJl 

 over the hills in the vicinity, and never saw a fallow-deer ; ^ 

 in fact, so far as I know, the species may practically be 

 considered as extinct." 



After this it is needless to say that we did not go to Astaco. 

 It is possible, nevertheless, that a few of these deer remain 

 further inland ; and if so, energetic measures might even now 

 save them. To the sportsman or naturalist they are most 

 interesting, as being the only wild (in contradistinction to 

 feral) fallow-deer in Europe with the exception of the 

 Sardinian ones. Judging from a head in the Athens Univer- 

 sity — in velvet, as all the heads there are — they must carry 

 exceptionally fine and somewhat peculiar horns. 



How it may be with the red- deer and chamoi's in Greece 

 I cannot, from personal experience, say ; but it is easy to 



^ When I published this letter in The Field, a naval officer wrote to say that, 

 although he must admit its general correctness, he had, as a matter of fact, seen 

 one very fine deer during the 1898-9 season. It was not very clear whether he 

 meant a fallow- or red-deer, however. Red-deer were formerly known on the hills 

 north of Pandelimona. 



U 



