DEER. 
383 
Tartarian Roe. 
Habits. 
of the Caucasus and the Ukraine, and it extends into Western Asia in Persia. 
Its fossil remains occur in the superficial deposits of England and the Continent; 
but at the present day roe deer are found wild within the limits of the British 
Isles only in Scotland, and in the neighbourhood of the Blackmoor Yale, in Dorset¬ 
shire, where they were reintroduced in the early part of the century. In the year 
1884 a few head were, however, turned out in Epping Forest; and some are 
kept in certain English parks. 
In Turkestan and the mountains separating Russia from China, 
the place of the ordinary roe is taken by the nearly-allied Tartarian 
roe (C. pygargus), distinguished by its superior size, the more hairy ears, and the 
larger white patch on the rump. In Mantchuria there is a third form, of small 
size, and differing somewhat in coloration from both the others. 
In Scotland roe deer are found chiefly in the woods, or on the 
immediately adjacent moors, but never wander far out on the open 
hills, although they will venture on to the cultivated lands in search of food. They 
feed in the early morning and towards evening, and generally associate in small 
family parties, while they make regular tracks through the woods to their feeding 
grounds. Their usual food is grass and other herbage, as well as the young shoots 
of such trees and bushes as they are able to reach. The speed of the roe is not 
great; but the animal is a great leaper, and, when running, its usual pace is a 
bounding gallop. 
The antlers of the adult bucks are shed about the end of the year, and the 
new ones are generally fully developed by the latter part of February. The 
pairing-season takes place during July and August, at which time the bucks are 
exceedingly pugnacious. Scrope relates that in the summer of 1820 two were 
found dead in a hollow after one of these contests, lying one on the top of the 
other, with the antlers of the one flrmly driven into the shoulder of the other, 
and vice versa. The fawns are born in the spring, usually early in May; and 
in Scotland about one doe out of five or six will produce two fawns at a birth 
in favourable seasons. No account of the roe would be complete without 
some reference to the extraordinary fact that although the pairing-season takes 
place in July or August, and the young are not produced till the following 
May, yet the period of gestation is only five months. The explanation of this 
appears to be that the ovum lies dormant for some four and a half months, that is 
until December, after which it develops in the ordinary manner. 
Certain extinct deer found in the Pliocene deposits of the Continent have been 
considered to belong to the same genus as the roe. 
The Chinese Water-Deer. 
Genus Hydropotes. 
Among the tall reeds fringing the banks of the Yang-tse-Kiang, there occur 
numbers of a small deer differing from any of the species hitherto noticed in that 
while both sexes are totally devoid of antlers, the males are provided with long 
scimitar-like tusks in the upper jaw, as shown in the figure on the next page. This 
