18a 
British Deer and their Horns 
Roe shed their winter coats at the beginning of May, but are frequently not in full 
red till the end of June. They are tolerably regular in this, but in the shedding of this red 
coat for the winter one they are most irregular. As a rule the dark thick coat is not fully 
developed till the middle of October, but I have seen in Perthshire the red all off by the 
beginning of September. In the north, however, they are generally a month later. In 
1896 I had an interesting letter from Mr. H. Brinsley-Brooke, who, following the tastes of 
his father and uncle, both well-known sportsmen and naturalists, dearly loves, rifle in hand, 
to pursue the roe. The following extract shows that in Speyside also the bucks cast early 
sometimes. 
Early in September 1894 I was out in a wood at Ballindalloch stalking for roe and saw two bucks 
having what was probably merely a friendly sparring match. They were in an open place on a hill-side 
M S 
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ROE FORCING HER FAWN TO LIE DOWN WHEN SHE HAS APPREHENDED DANGER 
above the wood, and there was no doe to be seen anywhere near. Though I had only two days before 
seen, in the same wood, a buck accompanied by a doe, both in the reddest of summer coats (in fact, all 
the roe I had seen during the week’s stalking were still so dressed), yet these two gentlemen were both as 
dark-coloured as one would expect to find them at Christmas time. 
In the first week in June the doe that is about to bring forth selects some little birch 
clump, or perhaps small wood where there is good feeding close by, and makes it her home 
for the next three months. Her two little fawns, for she generally has two, and never 
three, are born regularly in the first week in June. John Ross, whom I frequently quote 
in these pages as an authority, has seen calves on the 26th May, but never earlier. The roe 
doe goes forty weeks in young, and with regard to her gestation I am sorry that I can say 
nothing new. The question of the suspension of the uterus has occupied the attention of 
the German naturalists Dr. Pockles and Dr. Ziegler, but beyond knowing that the fcetus 
