4 2 FOREST CREATURES. 



discovered, or any sign that the animal might later 

 possibly bring forth young. 



Winkell, therefore, came to the conclusion that this, 

 as he imagined unfruitfid rutting season, was merely a 

 preparation for a later rutting, which took place in 

 December. For this reason he designates the former 

 " the false rut," and the other " the true rut," deciding 

 thus the period of gestation to be twenty and not forty 

 weeks. And truly he discovered in those does which he 

 dissected in the month of December, traces of an 

 embryo, which, as the season advanced, was more and 

 more developed. What therefore, he thought, could be 

 more surely proved than that the " true or effectual " rut 

 immediately preceded this state of things, and was in 

 November or December ? And imtil, as he said, this 

 embryo should be discovered in its different stages of 

 development from September, and on through the 

 following months, until then would he not give credit 

 to the theory, that the rutting season of the roe was 

 early in the autumn. " For who could believe it pos- 

 sible," he continues, " that during one half the period 

 of a state of pregnancy, all symptoms of such condition 

 should be wanting in the particular organs of any mam- 

 malia ? " 



And yet, — as no one known creature of the like 

 genus afforded a precedent for this deviation from all 

 recognised laws, such a circumstance might well be, and 



