ROE DEER. 133 



narrated by Mr. John Watson, who has written intimately of 

 the wild life of Westmorland. He says : " Once we came 

 suddenly upon a pretty little soft-eyed creature, evidently only 

 a few hours old. It squatted closely as we stood over it, but 

 when aware that it was observed, feigned death in the most 

 amusing manner, only with the softest and most wide-open 

 eyes imaginable. As we stooped towards it, with half a dozen 

 bounds it cleared the brake, and as a rapid stream stopped its 

 further progress, jumped in, and, after swimming about twenty 

 yards, came quickly ashore. It then trotted back to its bed 

 among the fern ; and yet it is probable that this fawn had not 

 previously used its legs, and had certainly never seen water." 



The name Fallow is the Anglo-Saxon fealewe, and indicates 

 the gilvous colour of the lighter race. Gray in 1843 separated 

 the species from the Linnean genus Cerviis under its species 

 name of Dama. The modern effort to get back to original 

 species names under the rules of priority has caused this Deer 

 to be dubbed Dama dama in the newest catalogues. We have 

 preferred to retain the Linnean Cervus dama, but our readers 

 can say Dama dama if they like it better. 



Roe Deer (Caprealus capraea, Gray). 



A third species of Deer, the Roe, is now to be found only in 

 our northern mountain woods. It is the smallest and prettiest 

 of our native species, and appears to have been formerly the 

 most widely distributed of the three (though never an Irish 

 species), but to have been driven further and further north by' 

 the advance of population and cultivation in the south. Even 

 so, quiet ramblers in the thicker woods and plantations of the 

 New Forest have a slender prospect of seeing it. About the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century, Lord Portarlington in- 

 troduced Roe to the woods of Milton Abbas, in Dorset, where 

 they prospered and increased. In the year 1876, or thereabouts, 



