OCCASIONAL NOTES. 209 
Roe-DEER IN DorsErsHtrE.—Mr. Mansel-Pleydell states (p. 121), 
that Mr. Drax colonized the Charborough Estate (together with the Blox- 
worth Woods, which are surrounded by it) in 1829, with Roe-deer from the 
Whatcombe district. The progeny of these, however, were completely 
exterminated soon after the year 1833, when Mr. Drax gave up hunting 
Roe-deer and took to Fox-hounds. Some years subsequently Mr. Drax 
again turned out, in Bere Wood and the adjoining Bloxworth Woods, some 
more Roe-deer, given to him by the late Baron Hambro’, of Milton Abbey ; 
and it is the produce of these latter, which are now to be seen occasionally 
though in rapidly diminishing numbers, in the woods of this district. 
The cause of their decreasing numbers is, most certainly, the thoughtless 
habit of sportsmen shooting at them out of range, and with too small shot, 
when cover-shooting in the winter months. I have myself, on more than 
one occasion, come across a dead Roe-deer which had evidently been hard 
hit with small shot, and gone away to die. Mr. Mansel-Pleydell speaks of 
the fecundity of the Doe, and gives its produce at a birth as “two and 
sometimes three fawns.” In Bell's ‘ British Quadrupeds’ (2nd ed., p. 365) 
the number is stated to be either “ one or two.”—O. P.-CamBrine@E (Blox- 
worth, Blandford, Dorset). 
[Mr. W. Colquhoun, a well-known authority on such matters, writes, 
‘* Roe-deer almost invariably produce two kids.” —Ep. 
ExIsTENCE OF THE Saga ANTELOPE IN FRANCE DURING THE 
ReinprEr AcE.—It is now several years since the late M. Lartet 
announced the discovery of fragments of horns of the Saiga in the 
quaternary deposits of Perigord, belonging to the Reindeer-period. At the 
same time he expressed the opinion that this Antelope was not living in 
France at the period in question, but that its horns had been obtained from 
foreign sources for use as weapons by palwolithic man. The Saiga is a 
curious sheep-faced Antelope, which at present inhabits the steppes or open 
plains of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, extending from Poland 
through the region of the Don and the Volga, as far eastward as the 
Altai and the Irtish River. It is of much interest to determine whether 
the distribution of this creature did or did not extend into France during 
post-pleiocene times. On this point M. Gaudry has recently communicated 
fresh information to the French Academy of Sciencés, in a note “ De 
l’existence des Saigas en France @ l’age du Renne.” This paleontologist 
has lately found among specimens from the bone-caves of Aquitaine not 
only the horns, but the teeth and many of the bones of the Saiga, some of 
which have been broken, obviously for the purpose of extracting the 
marrow. Itseems, therefore, to be now placed beyond doubt that the Saiga 
lived on the borders of the Tardoire and the Vezére, contemporary with the 
Reindeer, and that it served as food to the prehistoric men who dwelt in the 
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