126 ANIMAL LIFE OF THE BRITISH ISLES. 



to-day in the Highlands might give us a different impression 

 and in the winter especially do great damage to the plantations 

 of young trees. Agricultural lands in their vicinity also suffer 

 greatly, a whole field of turnips being ruined in a night by a 

 visit from a herd of Deer. They also destroy wheat, potatoes, 

 and cabbages ; and in the woods consume many toadstools, 

 acorns, and chestnuts. 



In spring and summer whilst his horns are growing the Stag 

 lives apart from his kind, but in the early autumn when these 

 are well-developed and hard, we may in suitable localities hear 

 his "belling" call to the Hinds, or in defiance to some rival. 



" The wild buck bells from ferny brake," 



as Sir Walter Scott puts it. There is a good deal of furious 

 fighting when two jealous Stags of similar age and strength 

 meet in the vicinity of the hinds. He is then in the prime of 

 condition, his neck and shoulders clad in a thick mantle of long 

 brown hair, and his head adorned with the noble pair of antlers 

 that reveals his age. Those that decorated and armed him last 

 autumn and winter were shed bodily about March, and a new 

 growth started soon after from the burred frontal knobs that 

 were left. It is important to notice the difference between 

 these solid though temporary growths and the mere shells that 

 permanently decorate the heads of oxen, sheep, and goats. In 

 the Deer they are what biologists term secondary sexual 

 characters ; they are possessed by the males only, and cast in 

 their entirety at the end of each breeding season with its 

 frequent contests between the Stags. The history of these 

 antlers is strangely like that of a tall perennial herb whose 

 stems and branches die down to the rootstock each winter 

 that is, after the plant's breeding season and start into more 

 vigorous growth each spring. The " rootstock " of the Stag's 

 horns makes its appearance at an early age, and its annual 

 growth is more numerously branched each succeeding year. 



