234 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOEEST. 



From spring to autumn his food consists of nu- 

 merous herbs, grasses, aquatic plants, leaves of shrubs 

 and trees, and the berries of the mountain ash and 

 dwarf cornel. When beech nuts are plenty— the trees 

 bear in alternate years — these constitute a large por- 

 tion of his fare. By the middle of September the 



deer in the Adirondack 

 region desert the water 

 courses and retire to the 

 more secluded parts of the 

 forest.* Here they congre- 

 gate during the deep snows 

 of winter in what are called 

 deer yards ; these are certain 

 sheltered localities where 

 the heavy snow is trampled down and pathways lead 

 in all directions toward promising food supplies, and 

 where under thickets of spruce and fir the animals 

 find saificiently comfortable beds. Mr. Verplanck 

 Colvin, speaking of one of these deer yards, describes 

 it as resembling a sheep yard in winter. f 



The deer is not a strictly nocturnal animal, al- 

 though he haunts the shores of the Adirondack lakes 



* Vide Transactions of the Linnsean Society. Animals of the 

 Adirondacks. Dr. C. H. Merriam. 



f Vide Eepoi't of the Adirondack Survey for 1880. Ver- 

 planck Colvin. 



