Fallow Deer 
and south at the end of July, returning again by the mating season at the beginning of 
November. Perhaps, like the wapiti of Western America, they have learned the danger 
which may be incurred at the expense of the pleasure of hearing their own voices at the 
time of love and war ; at any rate the wild fallow are remarkably silent, only giving vent to a 
grunt now and again, and not keeping up his wooing all day like a mating buck in a park. 
There are few deer and antelopes that are not worth studying, for nearly every member 
of the various groups betrays a strong individuality that is entirely his own. Both the 
artist and the naturalist who wishes to conscientiously do his work and render justice to the 
several individuals should, properly speaking, give up many months of observation to each 
separate creature, and it is only by so doing professionally that the observer can really get at 
the true heart of the character which governs all the habits and movements of any particular 
THE USUAL ORDER OF THE SEXES WHEN TRAVELLING 
creature. I am not one of those who, just because a beast happens to be very common and 
under our noses every day of our lives, think that we know all about him ; I think the best 
of us know very little about anything. It is perhaps for that very reason that most people 
utterly neglect one so common as the fallow buck. We turn up our so-called standard 
works and find the most minute descriptions of Sitatungas and Ovis poll , but poor old 
Cervus dama , who, like the poor, is ever with us, is dismissed in a few lines. Personally I 
think one will repay study just as well as the other. Anything in the way of animal life, 
well-nigh unattainable, though it may be of but ordinary interest, is eagerly sought after by 
the hunter. Yet to make a comparison, Ovis poll is not of much greater interest from the 
point of view of his general habits than the Highland ram with his beautiful curly horns. 
If the two could be made to change places one day, we should have plenty of keen and 
plucky hunters who would dash off at once to the ends of the earth, and could then write up 
his natural history and be happy in the possession of his noble trophies. Now I hope the 
reader will forgive this moralising, but I only wish to show that we do not know everything 
yet even about the sparrow in the street, and very few educated people recognise him in the 
