258 ANTLERS 



strain. This cannot be achieved under fifteen years. 

 Mr. Winans prescribes that, in eliminating whatever 

 varieties are not desired, a start should be made by kill- 

 ing off the bucks of those varieties. Thus, if a spotted 

 herd is the object (and that variety is the most typical 

 and ornamental), dark bucks and those indistinctly 

 spotted should be shot. In a large park this may 

 take two or three seasons to accomplish ; after which 

 elimination of the does should begin, all dark-coloured 

 fawns being killed meanwhile. A herd of fallow deer 

 which has been treated in this discriminating manner 

 is far more attractive than a motley crowd of various 

 colours, suggestive of domestic cattle. There is, how- 

 ever, no objection to one white buck in a spotted herd, 

 for his influence will tend to increase the spottiness. 



Red deer in parks are capable of improvement to an 

 indefinite extent, both in heads and bodies, by judicious 

 management. Mr. Winans has effected much in this 

 direction by crossing the native race with wapiti and 

 Altai deer. Personally, I have a strong aversion for 

 crossing species ; but as the union of these races pro- 

 duces fertile offspring, these cannot be reckoned as 

 hybrids or mongrels, but the joint progeny of geo- 

 graphical varieties of a single species of as honourable 

 parentage as the child of an English father and a 

 Celtic mother. Mr. Winans speaks very highly of the 

 offspring of a wapiti stag and a red hind crossed again 

 with an Altai stag. They are more grey in the coat 

 than pure red deer, but they weigh half as much again, 

 and the stags carry horns that can hardly be dis- 

 tinguished from such as one may see in old German 



