HIPPOPOTAMUSES, PIGS, AND DEER 335 



that a stag's voice would carry. Mr. Lydekker compares the 

 cry of the male red deer to the grunting, soughing roar of a 

 leopard, a not inapt comparison, as the present writer, who has 

 heard both, can testify.^ 



The breeding season of the red deer begins in September, 

 though the males display much interest in the gathering together 

 of a harem as early as August. In Scotland the breeding season 

 is at its height at the beginning of October. Some vigorous 

 stags will attempt to serve a harem of sixty hinds. During 

 this month of love-making they shepherd their hinds incessantly, 

 striving to keep them together and to beat off the intrusions 

 of rivals. At this period the stag has but little leisure to 

 devote to eating, being constantly on the alert. Despite his 

 utmost efforts sometimes his preserves are poached on by 

 daring youngsters, two- or three-year-olds. 



Gestation lasts a little over eight months, and the fawns are 

 born, therefore, in May and June. The mother attends and 

 defends her fawn with the greatest care and bravery. She teaches 

 it to conceal itself instantly on the approach of danger, the signal 

 being generally a tap with the fore foot. Red deer very rarely 

 bring forth more than one young at a birth, and although twins 

 are not unknown, triplets are absolutely unheard of. During 

 the winter, the hind, though pregnant with another young one, 

 assiduously cares for her half-grown fawn, and at that season 

 hinds and fawns congregate together while the males resume 



1 I was much struck by the loud bellow uttered by the Barbary stag 

 when travelling through the forests of the Tunisian-Algerian borderland, 

 in the late autumn of 1897, where these animals, now protected by the 

 French, are abundant. By a curious coincidence, in the same forest we 

 heard a leopard calling. The two spahis, who were sent with me as escort 

 by the French Government and the French verderer of an adjoining lodge, 

 both thought it was a stag calling, but on their making for the sound they 

 put up a leopard. In the same kind of country, but a little farther north, 

 in 1880 I took part in some battues got up by the French and Tunisians, 

 in which we killed Barbary stags, leopards, and lions. The lion is now 

 extinct in that country, but in 1880 he still lived partly on the unprotected 

 Barbary deer, which have increased somewhat in number since the lion was 

 exterminated. — H. H. J. 



