204 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



stag which has long ruled the herd is dispossessed by a 

 rising rival. 



Stags eat little during the excitement of the rutting season, 

 and are often much wasted by the end, when hard winter 

 weather may set in. Unless severe weather makes them 

 pack on the lowest and most sheltered ground, they abandon 

 the more or less gregarious life which they live during 

 autumn, and rove in small parties until the next autumn. 

 In May they throw off the grey-brown winter coat, and put 

 on the red-brown dress which gives them their distinctive 

 name. The hinds calve in May and June, and grow bold 

 in defence of their young. They have an inbred fear of 

 dogs, derived from the old days when they were assailed by 

 wolves, and will maul and even kill a dog by striking it with 

 their forefeet. In May in Scotland, a few weeks later than 

 in England, the stags also shed their horns. Very soon 

 the new ones begin to appear as velvet-covered knobs ; the 

 growth is very rapid, so that by early August the new pair 

 are complete, and the stag cleans them of their velvet coating 

 by rubbing them against trees, posts, and palings. Then the 

 stalking season begins in the Scotch forest, and stag-hunting 

 on Exmoor. Besides these great headquarters of the red 

 deer, and the handful still left in the New Forest, there is an 

 ancient herd still surviving on the Cumberland fells between 

 Helvellyn and Ullswater. 



Fallow deer have existed for many centuries in the New 

 Forest, and those of Windsor, Epping, and Rockingham, as 

 well as in other parks where they were originally shut up 

 and protected when the land around was enclosed. Red 

 deer stand about four feet high at the withers, and fallow 

 deer about three ; but the smaller deer, though less majestic, 

 is even more graceful. There are two distinct races, both 

 of very ancient origin, and conspicuously distinguished by 



