54 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



fawns in April or May. But they do not. The fawns 

 are not produced till after the rainy season, in October. 

 There is no stronger proof than this that the rains, 

 even of the tropics, are hurtful to animal life. 



When wild creatures are partly domesticated or 

 naturalised, the females begin either to disregard this 

 seasonal law, or, if living at large, to change the 

 period of producing young to suit the new seasons and 

 climate. 



But though the first and imperious instinct of pre- 

 serving the young dictates these physical adaptations, in 

 the ordinary matters of life they often do not learn 

 to accommodate themselves to new conditions. The 

 Sambur stags which the late Lord Powerscourt turned 

 out in his glens and woods on the Wicklow Mountains 

 persisted in lying in the thickest cover all day, trying 

 to shelter from the Indian sun, though the trees were 

 dripping with Irish rains and mist. Yet domesticated 

 sheep will always go to the top of a hill to sleep at 

 nights in the dry. In Dovedale the flocks climb in 

 the evening literally to the summit of Thorp Cloud, 

 and mark the skyline like a string of black beads against 

 the setting sun. 



The writer has no experience of the wild life of 

 the parts of Lancashire round Manchester, one of the 

 wettest areas of England, where, as Yorkshire men 

 say, there is no spring and no summer, but " all back- 

 end " i.e. autumn. But if rain is the main climatic 

 enemy of animals in these latitudes, we should expect 

 to find Ireland, the wettest of the three countries, and 

 the west coast of Scotland less populous in species 



