2 WOODLANDERS AND FIELD FOLK 



canopy, and adds its picturesqueness to the wild 

 scene. 



Wait and watch! Through the moonlit rides of 

 the forest come three or four slender shadows, 

 melting in and out of the trees. A family of roe-deer 

 is going down to the water springs to drink. All 

 through the day they have lain among thick tangle 

 and brushwood ; now they have come out to browse 

 upon the sweet leafage of the oak and birch and 

 hazel scrub that lie upon the confines of the pines. 

 The buck steps first, a proud, inquiring, yet shy and 

 wary thing. The roe is the smallest of our three 

 species of British deer, and this adult male stands 

 only about twenty-seven inches at the withers. 

 His small antlers, rounded at the base, have two tines. 

 The first bifurcates forwards, the second backwards. 

 His graceful head and tapering neck are set upon a 

 compact body supported by long and slender limbs. 

 It is summer, so both buck and hind show a covering 

 of rich warm brown. The two fawns that trot 

 daintily at the heels of their parents were dropped 

 in a nest of bracken only eight weeks ago. Their 

 coats are still dappled with the light spots that made 

 them so difficult to find when the sun mottled the 

 ground in a like design about their bed of fern and 

 leaves. They will follow their parents until early 

 winter, and then the snags will appear upon the 

 heads of the young bucks, and they will begin life 



