318 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Court painter, Wolff Pirkner. One or two of thern are given as 

 full-page illustrations, though on a reduced scale, in the volume 

 before us, and are most curious and instructive. 



Chapter XIII. is devoted to the Roe Deer, and opens with the 

 surprising statement that in Austria alone, excluding Hungary, 

 between 68,000 and 69,000 Roe are shot annually, and that nine 

 out of every ten are killed with the rifle. Counting Hungary, 

 we are told (p. 246) that the annual bag of Roe exceeds 100,000 

 head. The province at the head of the Austrian list is Bohemia, 

 where in 1892 (an average year) 12,920 Roes were shot, Lower 

 Austria coming next with 11,683. Much interesting information 

 follows on the chase of this animal in past and present times, 

 but as the species is comparatively well known we need not 

 stop to quote passages which would otherwise deserve notice. 

 Some curious heads are figured, but none of which the types 

 have not already been described in an illustrated article on 

 Abnormal Heads of the Roe Deer in * The Zoologist ' for 1884 

 (pp. 353-366). 



The chapter which will have the greatest novelty perhaps for 

 most readers is that devoted to the Ibex, Bouquetin, or Steinbock 

 as the Germans call it (Chap. XIV.). This animal is compara- 

 tively so little known except to the exceptionally fortunate few 

 who pursue it in its natural haunts that the account given of 

 it is especially welcome, the more so because of its increasing 

 rarity. In the Tyrol it became practically extinct towards the 

 end of the last century, though isolated examples have been met 

 with very much later. For example, a fine male was spied by a 

 Tyrolese chamois-hunter in the mountains near Nauders so 

 recently as 1874. The Carpathian Mountains are said to have 

 once been the home of the Ibex, as they still are of the Chamois, 

 but Mr. Grohman states that he has never come across any 

 documentary evidence to support this allegation. 



As compared with the Chamois, the Ibex is a very much 

 heavier animal. An adult male will weigh 200 lb., the doe less 

 than half that. The weight of an adult male Chamois is about 

 65 lb., the doe being about a fifth lighter. 



In 1821 an enthusiastic naturalist (Zumstein by name) pre- 

 vailed upon the Piedmont Government to pass stringent laws for 

 the protection of a small herd of Ibex which had found a refuge 

 in the heart of the Graian Alps, and his successful exertions, 



