DEER. 



tiifi Tync ; there it was frequently seen, and as fre- 

 quently hunted. But no clogs could come up with it 

 in speed ; and its arts were equal to its agility, as it 

 swam the river, or in some other way escaped. The 

 chasing was continued during 1 the sojourn of a very 

 severe winter ; and upon one occasion it crossed on 

 the ice, and by so doing was so much strained, that it 

 was easily taken alive. After being kept for some 

 weeks in the house it was again turned loose, but all 

 its enterprise and all its cunning appeared to have left 

 it ; for after being chased only a little way it lay down 

 in the middle of a brook, and was killed by the dogs. 

 This anecdote shows that the peculiarly elastic cha- 

 racter of the roebuck is quite incompatible with do- 

 mestication. It is also very difficult to confine this 

 species within enclosures, in consequence of the height 

 to which it can leap ; and as its flesh is not consi- 

 sidered quite so good as that of the others, and far- 

 ther, as there is not so much of it, it is left in a great 

 measure to its native freedom on the hills. It should 

 seem that the roebuck by being less excited in the 

 rutting season than the others does not come into such 

 high condition preparatory to that season. 



In England, roebucks are now very rare ; and as 

 there is cover for them in most of the places where 

 they might be looked for, they are not easily found. 

 In the Scottish mountains, however, they are more 

 abundant, though scattered, and rarely seen more 

 than one at a place at the same time. They are not 

 met with in exactly the same places as the red deer, 

 but rather where there is an admixture of hill and 

 rock and copse. They are also, at certain seasons 

 of the year, met with further down than the red deer 

 generally are, but they do not hesitate to take an 

 occasional dash into the inhabited parts of the country 

 when the winter is very severe on the hills ; but on 

 these occasions they generally have all their arts about 

 them ; so that it is but a passing sight which one can 

 obtain. It is also more difficult to get a shot at a 

 roebuck than at a red deer. In Scotland they are 

 found as far north as Sutherland and Caithness ; but 

 their chief haunts are in the neighbourhood of those 

 places which have been described as abounding most 

 with red deer ; only from the peculiarity of their 

 manners, and the fact of their feeding in the copse 

 and on the twigs, rather than browsing the herbage, 

 they are not often seen, to which their habit of lying 

 close till the danger be passed, contributes still farther. 



There is no account of the horns of the roebuck 

 being met with in the same accumulations as those of 

 the other deer in this country ; but they have been 

 found in some parts of France, though it is said that 

 there are some peculiarities in the fossil remains which 

 are not found in the living animals ; and thus, though 

 there is a similarity established, there is not a perfect 

 identity, so as to warrant us to conclude that the roe- 

 buck of our times existed and inhabited at the same 

 period and in the same country with those now ex- 

 tinct animals the Paleot/ierium and the Mastodon, 

 whose remains are found in the same accumulation of 

 peat, near the river Somme in France. 



Such is a short account of the three species of deer 

 which are met with in the wilds or in the parks of our 

 own country ; and they are the ones whose manners 

 we have the best access to study. 



THE AHU, or Tartarian roebuck Cervus pyg argus. 

 This is the roebuck of the middle latitudes ot Asia, 

 and of part also of the east of Europe. It is a larger 

 animal than our roebuck, and differs from it in having 



th hair longer, and the horns more developed, &nrt 

 more furrowed and tuberculated in their basal parts. 

 It is very generally distributed over the margins of 

 the waste, from the mountains which divide Persia 

 from the central countries of Asia, to some distance 

 into Siberia ; but it is not found in those parts of 

 that extensive region which have a decidedly polar 

 climate. In the summer season it keeps to the moun- 

 tains, among the cliff's of which it bounds with great 

 vigour ; but in the winter it descends to the plains. 



Like the roebuck it has no lachrymal sinuses, and 

 the tail is still more deficient, being nothing more than 

 a mere tubercle. The colour on the back is brown in 

 summer, and that on the under part is yellowish. On 

 the hinder part of the thighs and around the rudi- 

 mental tail, there is a disc of white, larger and more 

 conspicuous than in that of the roebuck ; and this 

 mark is constant amid all the varieties of colour in 

 the individuals, and all the changes from age or cli- 

 mate ; and the old and young, and also the summer 

 and winter appearances are so different, that animals 

 in these states have been described as distinct species. 

 A space round the nose and sides of the under lip is 

 black, but the lips themselves are white ; and those 

 characters also remain constant. 



The hair of this species is exceedingly thick, more 

 so, perhaps, than that of any other. In summer it is 

 stiff and erect, allowing the air to reach the skin, 

 notwithstanding the great thickness of the covering. 

 In winter it gets shaggy, and falls more closely on the 

 body, forming a very warm covering. It does not 

 appear that at this season it gets any of that long in- 

 termixture in its coat to which the name of " snow 

 hair" may be applied without much impropriety ; but 

 its general coat becomes dry and bleached to a hoary 

 colour at the points, which answers nearly the same 

 purpose. 



In all the field animals of central Asia, from the 

 Himalaya northward, there is some provision of this 

 kind ; and the great change of seasons to which this 

 part of the world is subject, is at once the necessity 

 and in all probability the cause of this provision. In 

 summer, the heat is excessive ; and the plains are 

 completely burnt up, so as to wear the aspect of vast 

 floors of indurated clay ; and at that season there is 

 no rain except on the mountains : and as the last 

 plants upon the margin of the desert, or in that kind 

 of shelter which makes an incipient desert of the 

 whole country, are always of a saline nature, the 

 ground is covered with saline incrustations. It is at 

 this season that such animals betake themselves to the 

 mountains, while the wandering horde of Tartars with 

 their cattle, move farther to the north, and reach the 

 lower parts of the plains or steppes, where there is 

 still some moisture to be found. 



In winter the cold is as proportionably severe as are 

 heat is ardent in summer ; for in plains the elevation 

 of which is not great, and which lie on the same 

 parallel of latitude with the south of Italy, and the 

 centre of Spain, where snow is rarely seen upon the 

 plains, and where there is very seldom ice upon even 

 the shallow pools, the rivers are so completely frozen 

 over, as to afford pontage to the inhabitants. 



So great a difference between the summer and the 

 winter naturally produces a corresponding difference 

 in those animals which, like the aim, are freely ex- 

 posed to the weather all the year round ; and this 

 climatal difference is quite sufficient to account for a.t 

 the external differences which are traceable between 



Ra 



