A NEW WONDER IN NATURAL HISTORY. 41 



rival who might venture to show himself. If, when the 

 stronger buck was toying mth the female, the weaker 

 one ventured to approach another doe, — the former 

 love of his formidable rival, — she, instead of }delding to 

 his caresses, would draw him by a coquettish retreat to 

 such spot where her former unfaithful lover was ^\ith 

 his new bride, and about to claim his rights as her lord 

 and spouse. But, on beholding the bold new comer, he 

 would leave these joys untasted, to chase and punish 

 the intruder. 



This circumstance Winkell considered a hint, that 

 the rutting noiu " could not really be in earnest," 

 especially as in November and in December a buck 

 remains with one and the same doe. One morning in 

 August, from his look-out among the leafy branches, he 

 saw a doe, part of whose ear had been cut off while a 

 fawn, chased by a roebuck ; and at the foot of the tree 

 where he was, the marriage was consummated. He 

 waited and watched its repetition more than once. The 

 same happened again some days later with another doe. 

 Both of these does he shot in October, and on examining 

 them minutely, no traces of a ^tate of gestation were 

 to be found. Every following year he shot in October 

 an old and a young doe ; some, too, tvhom he had seen 

 with the buck, and recognised by certain marks, and 

 which therefore ought, on dissection, to have given signs 

 of pregnancy. But in none of these was an embryo 



