34 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE RED DEER 



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the supply of food has a direct influence upon the 

 powers of the reproductive system of the red-deer 

 hind. Deer, by the way, are very fond of nibbling the 

 remains of shed antlers. 



An excellent instance of this is mentioned in a 

 letter which Mr. A. Williamson contributed to Harvie 

 Brown and Buckley's * Fauna of the Outer Hebrides.' 

 Referring to the deer of the Lews, Mr. Williamson 

 reported, ' I noticed one very striking peculiarity, their 

 immense craving for bones and old deer's horns. 

 My predecessor shot an old horse a few days before he 

 left in May, about two miles from the Lodge. When 

 I arrived in August the deer were coming nightly to 

 chew the. bones, and all the latter had disappeared 

 before I left in November of the same year. I have 

 often, when lying watching a herd, seen the hinds 

 chewing the horns of a stag lying on the ground, and 

 that this was a common practice was shown by the 

 marks of their teeth upon the horns of almost every 

 stag I killed late in the season.' Mr. Harvie Brown 

 remarks that the greater appetite displayed by the deer 

 of the Long Island for bones and cast horns may be 

 accounted for by the almost total absence of bone- 

 producing elements in the geology of the Hebrides. 

 The fact that hinds are fond of cast antlers is not 

 in any sense peculiar to the Hebrides, though it may 



