NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 317 



the majority of such reported cases fraudulently prepared heads 

 have been made up to deceive the unwary collector of hunting 

 trophies. He does not make any allusion to a reported four- 

 horned Chamois which was figured and described in * The Field' 

 of Dec. 13th, 1879, and concerning this we should be curious to 

 know his opinion. 



There is one point in connection with the natural history of 

 the Chamois on which Mr. Baillie Grohman does not enlighten 

 us. We do not find any mention of the period of gestation in this 

 animal. Authorities differ on this point. Lord Clermont states, 

 in his 'Guide to the Quadrupeds of Europe' (p. 139), that the 

 female goes with young between seven and eight months, and 

 produces one at a birth. The Marquis de Cherville, in his 

 excellent ' Dictionnaire des Chasses,' 1885, writes of the 

 Chamois (p. 49) : " Les femelles portent cinq mois, et mettent 

 bas en Avril un petit, rarement deux." According to Charles 

 Boner twenty weeks is the period. 



We pass over the next hundred and odd pages, devoted to an 

 account of Chamois hunting both by "stalking" and "driving," 

 for the purpose of seeing what our author has to say of the 

 Red Deer of the Alps, and come to a chapter (Chapter IX.) 

 which is if possible even more interesting than those which 

 precede it. 



In Austria and Germany the chase of the Red Deer has not 

 undergone any such radical changes as in France and England ; 

 indeed, in the Alps, according to our author, it is conducted 

 to-day in almost precisely the same manner as in the Middle 

 Ages. Upon two important facts historical research throws a 

 strong light, viz. upon the great diminution in the number, and an 

 almost equally great deterioration in the size of stags that has 

 taken place within the last 250 years. We have not space to 

 quote the statistics given on this subject, but they are so curious 

 that those of our readers who are deer-stalkers will find them well 

 worth perusal. The illustrations which accompany them are 

 valuable, too, as enabling us to compare some of the antlers of 

 the past with those obtainable at the present day. We are very 

 glad to learn from a footnote on p. 172 that the author proposes 

 to reproduce a series of twenty-one plates, from an illuminated 

 MS. Chronicle of the Duke Casimir of Coburg (1564-1633), 

 which were painted more than 250 years ago by the Coburg 



