zoo 
British Deer and their Homs 
skin. He says : “ I was going round my beat (at that time above Loch Etive, Argyle) 
one afternoon in summer and saw a roebuck feeding on the hill-side several hundred yards 
from a wood. All of a sudden he dropped in his tracks as if shot, and the next moment a 
golden eagle just missed the place where the buck had been standing, and swung up into the 
air again. The buck, however, did not stay where he was, but dashed off roaring with all 
his might in abject fear. The eagle immediately got up steam and was after him ; the 
quarry again dropped to the ground just as the eagle was about to seize him by the head. 
These manoeuvres were repeated again and again, and the roe kept roaring with fear all the 
time he was running until he fairly baffled the clumsy eagle and found sanctuary in the cover.” 
Th e venison of roe is not much esteemed in this country, though in Germany it is 
thought very highly of. It, however, makes excellent soup ; but perhaps it is better as 
“ a graun’ baste to send to your friens.” 
Varieties are very rare in this species, and from my notes I give the following instances 
of whole or partial albinoes :—A two-year-old buck, which was cream colour, was killed at 
Cawdor about the year 1880, and another was also shot about the same time at Brodie ; 
whilst a pied doe, of which I give an illustration, was killed at Foyers, Inverness-shire, a 
few years ago, and is now in my collection. An adult buck which was said to be pure white 
was well known in the woods by Kinross in 1894, and a friend who hunts with the Fifeshire 
hounds told me that the pack got on to this buck one day and ran him to Ladybank, where 
he was left and the hounds whipped off. I do not think he has been killed, or I fancy I 
should have heard of it. 
For some time the Hon. Walter Rothschild deposited a handsome white variety 
of this species in the Zoological Gardens, and a curious fact about this animal was that one 
winter he was white, and the following summer was the natural red, reverting again to 
white next winter, and back to half-white and half-red in the following summer, when he 
was killed. A year or two ago a white roebuck appeared at Dalness, causing some alarm in 
the district, as there is an old Highland superstition that ill luck will befall the owner of the 
estate should such a thing occur. 
Melanie varieties of any birds or animals are very rare, but it is interesting to know 
that at Steinhuder Meer, in the north of Hanover, a country of moor and peat, all the roes 
are blackish brown, which even the cc tourist ” recognises at a glance. There is a black 
variety of the roe in the British Museum from Westphalia, and the one in the possession of 
Mr. Walter Rothschild, a photograph of which he kindly sends me, is from Germany, 
though no locality is given. 
The reader may perhaps find fault with me for giving pictures of this variety and one 
or two German roe heads, on the ground of their not being British; but though such 
abnormalities have not, so far as I am aware, occurred in this country, they might do so 
any day, and therefore could be easily recognised in this work. 
