56 FARM VERMIN, HELPFUL AND HURTFUL, 



ripen. The hinds eat voraciously of all the fruit hanging 

 within their reach, whilst the stags stand on their hind legs 

 for the purpose of bringing down the fruit and breaking off 

 the smaller fruit-laden branches that are situated beyond the 

 reach of their mouths. 



Fallow-deer [Cervzis dama). 

 Fallow-deer commit very nearly the same kinds of damage 

 in woods and nurseries as is occasioned by the red-deer. But 

 as they are more restless and more dainty than the latter in 

 their grazing, they perhaps do somewhat more damage by 

 nibbling young growth and trampling it under foot. On 

 the other hand, they are much less given to gnawing and 

 stripping the bark ; this only takes place when they are 

 confined within deer-parks, but not when they have the 

 freedom of the forest, and can roam over large areas. The 

 fallow-stag is somewhat later than the red-deer in fraying 

 the velvet from its broad antlers ; but, like the latter, it 

 loves to select the less common species of trees as fraying- 

 stocks. 



Roe-deer {Capreohis caprcea). 

 Roe-deer are fond of varying their ordinary food with 

 beech-nuts and acorns, or with the cotyledons of young oak 

 and beeches, and love to nibble and browse on the buds and 

 young shoots of many kinds of trees, particularly when 

 these latter are succulent and juicy in the spring. They 

 exhibit in this latter respect a preference for maple, syca- 

 more, acacia, oak, beech, ash, aspen, willow, larch, and silver 

 fir, whilst pines and spruce appear less dainty to them, and 

 alder and birch the least toothsome of all. But these general 

 preferences also give place, as in the case of the red and 

 fallow deer, to the superior attractions offered by any par- 

 ticular kinds of trees that, being of less frequent local 

 occurrence, are simply scattered individually throughout 

 the w^oods. Plantations with a sunny southern or south-west- 

 ern exposure are apt to suffer more from nibbling during 

 the winter months than those having a northern or north 



