MAMMALS. 



197 



land the female Roe has often two calves following her ; but this, 

 according to our experience, is much rarer in the higher glens, 

 where one is the more usual number. 



Like Red Deer, Roe are great wanderers, and are found during 

 the rutting season, indeed most of the summer, in places they 

 never occupy at other times. Although generally found in woods, 

 this is by no means always the case, as we have seen them miles 

 from any wood, and that too in the late autumn and early winter, 

 where one would suppose they would naturally be making for the 

 warmer covers. Roe are at times found almost in herds, and 

 we have heard of as many as from nine to fourteen having been 

 seen in one lot. 



One of the best heads that came to Macleay to be preserved 

 belonged to an animal that had got entangled in a sheep-net, which 

 latter was placed round some turnips in Ross-shire. 



The O.S.A. gives Cabrach (vol. vii. p. 304), Abernethy, and 

 Kincardine (vol. xiii. p. 136), and Mortlach (vol. xvii. 418). 



At present they are very widely dispersed and very abundant 

 in the most suitable coverts. In Pennant's time Roe abounded in 

 the forests of Tarnaway,^ on the Findhorn, and by the accounts 

 of the Stuarts in their Lays of the Deer Forest^ were abundant also 

 in 1824. 



Roe appear however to have become much scarcer, numbers 

 fluctuating with the destruction or renovation of timber tracts 

 from decade to decade. According to the Stuarts, they almost 

 utterly deserted Tarnaway (or Darnaway) when saw-pits and 

 pine-felling became the order of the day, but now again they 

 are far from being scarce there, in the extensive newly-planted 

 areas. 



R. Thomson (Ferness) writes : — ' Owing to the vast extent of 

 surface which is now planted, and forming suitable cover, the roe- 

 buck is quite common in every part of the county {i.e. of Nairn). 

 It is never seen, however, in the open ground except when it is 

 feeding or passing from one plantation to another.' This fact is 

 not invariable, however, in other districts, where the Roe are often 

 glad to lie out amongst heather, far from wood, to escape from, or 

 in part at least avoid, the plague of flies. 



Mr. J. G. Thomson, Grantown, in a letter dated March 19th, 

 1 Tarnaway of earlier authors ; Darnaway as presently applied. 



