HABIT AND DOMESTICATION. 805 
bucks for my own table. I had observed two or three does that 
generally had two fawns at a birth which appeared vigorous and 
healthy, while the other does that survived became or always had 
been barren. I think I may safely express the opinion that from 
afew exceptional individuals that could bear domestication and 
who were capable of imparting similar vigor to their descend- 
ants, I have obtained a stock of Virginia Deer, which though not 
as prolific by any means as the wild deer, are still moderately so 
and have sufficient vigor to insure the success of my experiment, 
while ‘the descendants of ninety per cent. of those taken from 
the wild state will degenerate in domestication, so that in a few 
generations they will become extinct. This want of vigor does 
not show itself so much in the first stock as in the second and 
third generation, while but very few will reach the fourth gen- 
eration. I am now passing the fifth winter with what I may 
call vigorous fawns, none of which have died from an appar- 
ent want of vigor, as was the case before, so that my stock has 
actually increased, while I have supplied my table abundantly 
with venison from the bucks. A majority of the does are still bar- 
ren, but this I deem fortunate, for they are not giving me en- 
feebled descendants to perpetuate for a time a stock which cannot 
bear domestication. However, a part of the barrenness of one 
year may probably be attributed to my attempt to force a cross 
‘between the Virginia does and the black-tailed buck, to effect 
which I kept quite a number of the does in one of the parks with 
that buck alone, but none of them had fawns, and my experiment 
was a failure. Indeed, the buck paid no more attention to the 
does, so far as we could observe, than did the Southdown ram 
in the same inclosure. Each would drive a doe from coveted 
food with equal rudeness. 
The want of vigor and reproductive powers in the deer are prob- 
ably due, to some extent at least, to the want of arboreous food, 
of which the Virginia Deer have to a large extent been deprived. 
However, a want of proper food is not the sole cause of the dete- 
rioration produced by domestication. The confinement which 
prevents them from roaming abroad, the want of exercise, and 
the absence of that constant vigilance, prompted by the instinct 
of self preservation to avoid enemies, no doubt, have a large in- 
fluence to produce the result I have observed. But we may not 
be able to wholly explain why it is that a considerable propor- 
tion of the Common Deer taken from the wild state and subjected 
. . . -@ 
to the influence of domestication, so deteriorate as to become 
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