77 



were barely perceptible to the touch, but the little hillocks 

 of bone were quite distinct on the skulls. The pelage was 

 dense, and attained a length of 38 mm. on the flanks, but there 

 was no suggestion of underfur. 



Captain Funcke felt quite certain that our three fawns 

 had been born not later than the middle of February, which 

 he said was the normal time of year for the Lower Californian 

 subspecies. If one were to judge by analogy with the fawns 

 of white-tailed deer, the young antelopes would have been 

 called at least three months of age. Now throughout the 

 western United States, and wherever antelopes occur along 

 the Mexican border, June is the month in which most of the 

 young are born. Only rarely are the fawns known to have 

 come into the world as early as May, although the birth 

 season may be greatly extended at its later end. Mearns 

 (1907), for instance, once observed near the Mexican line a 

 doe antelope with two small fawns on September 23, and he 

 took both large and small fetuses from females killed in June. 



Owing to the size and probable age of our fawns, the circum- 

 stances under which they were taken, and the corroborative 

 evidence of such hoof-prints as we saw, there can be little 

 doubt that they were still in the care of their mothers, and 

 that they had been merely temporarily left to themselves. 

 The doe antelope's custom of leaving her fawns in hiding, 

 usually at some little distance from one another, while she 

 forages for herself, is well known. Hofer (1899) describes 

 with what watchfulness and subtlety a doe returns to the 

 place where her young are patiently awaiting her, concealed 

 rather by their own quietness than by any cover. He states 

 that the fawns go down on their knees, like lambs, to suckle, 

 and that if the family becomes alarmed while the youngsters 

 are nursing or playing, they "drop, as if shot, never stopping 

 to fold a leg under them, but flattening themselves on the 

 ground." It was in just -such a ''frozen" posture that our 

 Mexican found the first victim. 



In February, according to Captain Funcke, the Lower 

 Californian antelope does are harried continually by the 

 pestiferously abundant coyotes, which eat the afterbirth and 



