UNGULATA 47 



But when these are scarce they will eat almost any shrub. They will 

 not eat birch or beech {Nothofagus sp.) nor celery-leaved pine 

 (Phyllocladus), till other food is exhausted. In the thickly-stocked 

 districts all the undergrowth of the bush, as high as the deer can 

 reach, is eaten out by them, and this is mostly done in the winter, 

 when the high open country is covered with snow and they take to 

 the forest for food and shelter. For the rest of the year the grass 

 country is in the undisturbed possession of the deer, as they have 

 no sheep to compete with them for the food. Mr B. C. Aston in an 

 account of the crossing of the Ruahine Range in January, 1914, says : 

 After getting up about 3200 feet in Fagusfusca and Fagus cliffortioides 

 forest, where there was a sprinkling of PhyUocladus alpinus saplings, we 

 found many with the bark rubbed off, which R. A. Wilson (an experienced 

 deer-stalker) informed me was done by the deer, which always select this 

 tree to rub their horns on. Mr Wilson was surprised that the deer in this 

 district had left bunches of Loranthus flavidtis and L. tetrapetahis hanging 

 within reach, whereas in the South Island they are so fond of Lorantkus, 

 that they are frequently found hanging by the feet, caught in the Fagiis 



trees in an endeavour to jump higher On an open clearing at a height 



of 4000 feet, where there was an abundance of Aciphylla squarrosa and 

 Hierochloe redolens growing together, we found the deer had eaten the 

 grass back into the Aciphylla, until the spinous leaves of the latter had 

 pricked their noses. 



Mr Hansen, lighthouse keeper at Cape PalUser, reports (April, 191 1) 

 on the Waitutumai Creek, the gully of which is here eight miles 

 long, three miles broad, and surrounded by hills from 2000 to 3000 

 feet high and completely bush-clad: 



The terraces have been made passable by the Red Deer, which have 



eaten away all the lower branches and foliage There are no pines, ratas, 



fuchsias, native currants or other berry-bearing trees, on which many 

 native birds make a living. There are no native birds seen, except a few 

 bush-wrens, and one tui was heard. Silence reigned. The deer, mosdy 

 stags, come out of the forest from the middle of September to the end of 

 January, when they are in the 'velvet,' and are very tame. 



W. G. Morrison of Hamner Springs in giving evidence before the 

 Royal Commission on Forestry in 1913, said the red deer were very 

 destructive to forests both of indigenous and planted trees. They 

 were particularly fond of Nothopanax Colensoi, and stripped them 

 to a height of 9 ft. — ^the trees mostly dying. He had counted as many 

 as 15 trees damaged in a space of 20 yards square. They also destroyed 

 larch and Pinus laricio. 



* Fallow Deer (Cervus dama) 

 Hon. S. Thorne George, who lived on Kawau from 1869 to 1884, 

 says that the first fallow deer in the colony were introduced there 



