THE FALLOW DEER. 339 



can be more soft and tender than these; nor can 

 any thing, at this time, exceed their sensibility, as 

 is evident from the great solicitude which the animal 

 displays to guard them from every kind of injury, 

 In this tender state of the head, if the Buck be 

 attacked, he cannot use it to act either offensively 

 or defensively; and if, during this period, any con- 

 tention arises among the Bucks, they fight each 

 -other by rising erect, and striking with their fore 

 legs. After the horns have broken through the 

 skin, they gradually enlarge, lengthen, and widen 

 at their tops; and when at full growth, the skin, 

 with all its apparatus of vessels, which had served 

 to nourish the horns, being grown useless, is 

 rubbed off by the animal ; the impressions of the 

 blood vessels still remain on the complete horn, 

 in the form of so many ramified furrows. 



The duration of the life of Fallow Deer has been 

 generally estimated at about twenty years. 



Fallow Deer are easily tamed, if they are caught 

 young and allowed a sufficient space to range in; 

 but the Bucks, (though less savage than Stags,) if 

 confined to a small space, such as the inclosures 

 in the Botanic Garden at Paris, always lose their 

 natural mildness. In one of these inclosures, along 

 with several Does, there is a Buck, which was taken 

 "when quite young from the wood at Boulogne. 

 For a while it continued very docile, but it after- 

 wards became, in some measure, fierce and wild; 

 though it has not lost all its original gentleness of 

 A a 2 disposition, 



