The horns of the stag increase in bulk and height from the second year to the eighth, and from that time remain with equal beauty during all the vigor of life; but when he begins to decline with age they decline also. It rarely happens that our stags have more than 20 or 22 antlers, and even this number is by no means constant, but he will have a greater number one year than another, according to the nourishment and repose he has enjoyed; and upon the same circumstances the size and quality of the horns likewise depend. It is like the wood of the forest, large, tender, and light, in moist and fertile countries, and short, hard, and heavy in such as are dry arid barren. The size and shape of the animals also vary according to the districts they inhabit. Those which range in valleys, or gently-rising hills, abounding in grain, are much larger than those which frequent dry and rocky mountains; the latter are short and thick; they are not so swift as the former, but can run much longer; they are likewise more mischievous; their horns are short and black, like a tree stinted in its growth, whose bark is always of a darkish hue; whereas the horns of those which feed on plains are lofty, and of a clear red, like the wood and bark of trees which grow in a good soil. These little thick stags generally inhabit among the underwood, where they can the more easily conceal themselves from the pursuit of the dogs. Those of Corsica appear to be the smallest of these mountain stags, and are hardly more than half the size of those common among us, and are, as it were, the terrier among stags; his body is squat, his legs are short, and his hair is dark brown. I am convinced that the size and stature of stags depend upon the quality and quantity of their food, from having reared one, and supplied him very plentifully, who at the end of four years was taller, plumper, and in every respect better furnished than the oldest stags in my woods, though they are of a very large size.
The most common colour of the stag is yellow, though many of them are brown, and some red. White stags are more uncommon, and seem to be a race which have been domesticated, but in very early times, for both Aristotle and Pliny mention them, though as very rare. The colour of the horns, as well as the hair, seems to depend on the nature and age of the animal, and the impression of the air. The horns of the young stags are more white and untinged than those of the old ones. Those stags whose hair is a light yellow have often sallow coloured horns; those of a lively yellow their horns are red, and brown ones, especially those which have black hair on their necks, have black horns. It is true that the interior parts of the horns of all stags are almost equally white, but they differ greatly in point of solidity and texture. Some of them are even spongy and have large cavities. The difference of texture is sufficient to account for their difference in colour, without having recourse to the sap of trees as productive of that effect; especially since we daily see the whitest ivory change brown or yellow if exposed to the air, although its substance is more complete than that of the horns of the stag.
The stag seems to have good eyes, an exquisite smell, and excellent ears. When listening he raises his head, pricks up his ears, and then hears from a great distance; when going into or issuing from a coppice, or half-covered place, he stops to take a full view round him, and scents the wind by way of discovering whether any thing is near that is likely to give him disturbance. Though rather simple he has curiosity and cunning. If any one whistle or call to him from a distance, he stops short, gazes attentively, and with a kind of admiration; and if those who disturbed him have neither arms nor dogs, he passes along quietly and without altering his pace. With equal tranquility and delight he appears to listen to the shepherd’s pipe, and the hunters to embolden them sometimes make use of those instruments. In general he fears men much less than dogs, and entertains neither distrust nor artifice but in proportion as he is disturbed. He eats slow, selects his food, and when full he seeks out a place to lie down and ruminate at leisure; though he does not seem to perform the act of rumination with the same ease as the ox, and it is not without violence that he can make the food rise from his first stomach; this is occasioned by the length and direction of the passage through which the aliment has to pass. The ox has a straight, short neck, but that of the stag is long and arched; efforts, therefore, are necessary to raise the food, and which efforts are made by a kind of hiccough, the action of which is manifest as long as he continues to ruminate. As he advances in age his voice is more strong and tremulous: that of the hind is weaker and shorter, and she never exerts it from love but only from fear. The stag raises a frightful cry in rutting time, for he is so transported that nothing disquiets or terrifies him; he is therefore easily surprised, and being loaded with fat cannot long maintain the chace; but when reduced to an extremity he is dangerous, and will attack the dogs with a kind of fury. He seldom drinks in the winter and not at all in the spring, the dew with which the tender grass is surcharged being then sufficient; but in the heat of summer, he has recourse to brooks, marshes and fountains, and in rutting time he is so overheated that he searches every where for water, not only to appease his immoderate thirst, but to bathe himself and refresh his body. He swims much better at this than at any other time because of his fat, which is specifically lighter than an equal quantity of water. He has been seen to cross large rivers; it has even been asserted that, allured by the scent of the hinds in rutting time, stags will throw themselves into the sea, and pass from one island to another at the distance of several leagues. They leap still better than they swim, for when pursued they easily clear a fence or hedge of six feet high. Their aliment differs according to the seasons: In autumn, after the rutting season, they search out the buds of green shrubs, the flowers of the heath, brambles, &c. In the winter, during snow, they peel the bark off the trees, and feed upon that and the moss, &c. and in mild weather they range for provender among the corn fields. In the spring they seek out the trembling poplar, willow, hazel, &c. In summer, when they have abundance, they seem to like no grain so well as rye, and no wood equal to the black-berry bearing alder.
The flesh of the fawn is very delicate, that of the hind and pricket not bad, but that of the full-grown stag has always a strong and disagreeable taste. The skin and the horns are the most useful parts of this animal; from the former is made a very pliable and durable leather. The horns are used by cutlers, and other mechanics, and a volatile salt, much used in medicine, is drawn from it by chemists.
SUPPLEMENT.
By a letter I received from M. Beccaria, a celebrated Professor at Pisa, dated October 28, 1767, it appears the pupil of the eye of the stag, as well as that of the cat, owl, &c. contracts in the light, and dilates in the dark; of this he was perfectly convinced by some experiments he made with a stag confined in a darkened apartment, but he found the effect was very different from that in the animals above mentioned, for their contraction and dilation is made vertically, while those of the stag are horizontally.
I have also received information of a fact from M. le Marquis d’Amazaga, that merits being noticed in the history of the stag. We have already observed that their horns begin to acquire the form and existence, which they retain for the remainder of the year, at the beginning of August, and after noticing this fact he proceeds in the relation, "that on the 17th of October the attendants of the Prince of Condé chaced a stag six years old, and it being the rutting season they were greatly surprised at the swiftness of his pace and the distance he led them, which was full six leagues from his harbour; and this surprise received no small addition when he was taken, by his horns appearing white and sprinkled with blood, as they are at the season when they rub them against the trees; and it was evident, on his being opened, from the situation of his interior parts, that he had never experienced the effects of the rut, and as he had not been in a condition for rutting he was as loaded with fat as though it had been the month of June, July, or August. Besides this he had another singularity; his right foot wanted the middle bone, and which in the left was at least half an inch long, large, and pointed. As the stag, if he be castrated when he has no horns, never acquires any after, or never loses them if performed when his horns are in perfection, it is but reasonable to suppose that they were retarded, in the present instance, from the imbecility of his organs, but which however were sufficient to effect the fall and renewal of his horns, as it was evident when he was killed that he had had horns annually from the second to the sixth year." These observations strongly prove the justness of our former remarks upon the renovation of the horns of the stag.
In remarking on the Norwegian stags, Pontoppidan says, “they are only in the dioceses of Bergen and Drontheim, and that they have been seen to swim in numbers across the straits, from the continent to the adjacent islands, resting their heads upon each other’s cruppers, and when those who lead are fatigued they retire behind, and the most vigorous take their places.”
Some attempts have been made to render our stags domestic, by treating them with the same gentleness as the Laplanders do their rein-deer; upon which subject M. le Vicomte de Querhoënt has informed me of the following fact: “The Portuguese first brought stags to the Isle of France, and although they took their origin from those of Europe, they were small and their colour grey; there were great numbers of them upon the island when the French took possession of it; they destroyed many of them, but a great proportion secured themselves in the most retired places; these by degrees have become quite domestic, and some of the inhabitants keep them in large flocks.”
There is a small kind of stag at l’Ecole Vétérinaire, which I have seen, and which is said to have come from the Cape of Good Hope. It was spotted with white, somewhat like the axis, and was called the hog stag, merely, as it should seem, because its legs were shorter, and it was not so agile as the common kind. The length of this from the muzzle to the extremity of the body, was only three feet four inches; its legs were short, and its feet and hoofs small; it was yellow with white spots, black eyes, and black hair on the upper eyelid; the nostrils were also black, as were the corners of the mouth; the head was nearly of the same colour as the belly, and it had large ears, white on the in and yellow on the outside. Its horns were above eleven inches long and ten lines thick. Its back was dark brown, its tail was yellow above and white beneath, and its legs were of a brownish black. From all which it appears this animal approaches nearer to the species of the stag than to the fallow-deer.