298 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 
was ever heard of within five hundred miles of here, and no wild 
Columbia Deer was ever seen either in or east of the Rocky 
Mountains. We may well suppose that the change of climate 
and probably of aliment was too great for them. All have died 
of one disease, — diarrhea. I hope some one in a congenial lo- 
cality will make a serious effort to domesticate both these species. 
Of both species the first I had dropped in my grounds were 
twins. Those from the Mule doe lived nearly a year and a half, 
which gave me a good opportunity to observe the habits of the 
young. They grew to a fair size; and on the male grew very 
large antlers for his age, both of which were bifurcated. Neither 
of these fawns showed the least inclination to breed the summer 
they were a year old. The conduct of the mother as connected 
with these fawns, of course interested me. She hid them in 
separate places, and only sought them at intervals to give them 
nourishment, and would never go near them, if she suspected she 
was watched, imitating exactly in this regard the Virginia deer. 
When one was found and placed in a yard with a fence four feet 
high, she would sometimes jump the fence and visit it, but re- 
fused to allow it to suck till the other was found and placed in 
the same yard, when she nursed them both indifferently. I 
could not imagine the cause of her conduct to the first till I 
found she had another, for which she was evidently saving all 
the milk. I kept them in the yard but a couple of weeks, where 
they were visited frequently in order to tame them, but we made 
little progress in that direction; and believing they would do 
better at large I turned them out, when she immediately secreted 
them, and it was six weeks more before she allowed them to 
follow her, never being seen to visit them except very early in 
the morning, or late in the evening. I would sometimes come 
across one in its seclusion, when after the manner of the Virginia 
fawn it would crouch as low down as possible, with its chin 
upon the ground and great ears laid back upon its neck, and if it 
believed itself undiscovered would remain perfectly still, following 
me with its bright eyes till very near it, but as soon as it ap- 
preciated that it was discovered would bound away with the 
jumps before described, towards some ravine or thicket till out of 
sight, never stopping once to look back, as is frequently the case 
with the fawns of the Virginia deer. In the fall, however, they 
become much tamer than the Virginia fawns raised in the same 
grounds and under the same circumstance, except the two weeks’ 
confinement before mentioned. By November they would cau- 
