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[Pl. 83.]][K 133.
Roe Deer Fawn.
Watching for its mother from its birthplace.

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The name Fallow is the Anglo-Saxon fealewe, and indicates the gilvous colour of the lighter race. Gray in 1843 separated the species from the Linnean genus Cervus under its species name of Dama. The modern effort to get back to original species names under the rules of priority has caused this Deer to be dubbed Dama dama in the newest catalogues. We have preferred to retain the Linnean Cervus dama, but our readers can say Dama dama if they like it better.

Roe Deer (Capreolus capraea, Gray).

A third species of Deer, the Roe, is now to be found only in our northern mountain woods. It is the smallest and prettiest of our native species, and appears to have been formerly the most widely distributed of the three (though never an Irish species), but to have been driven further and further north by the advance of population and cultivation in the south. Even so, quiet ramblers in the thicker woods and plantations of the New Forest have a slender prospect of seeing it. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lord Portarlington introduced Roe to the woods of Milton Abbas, in Dorset, where they prospered and increased. In the year 1876, or thereabouts, it is said that some of these made their way across country for twenty-five miles and settled in the New Forest. There are very few of them, and this fact combined with their cleverly elusive movements in the dense coverts they affect, makes the chance of seeing them very remote, more particularly as the Roe is nocturnal in its habits.

The Roe stands only about two and a quarter feet at the shoulders. Its colour in summer is bright red-brown, the coat short and smooth; but in winter it becomes long and brittle, and the colour changes to a warm grey. The tail is so short as to be scarcely visible among the surrounding hairs which, as well as the under parts and the inner sides of the thighs, are white. The ears are relatively larger than those of the other species, covered with long hairs and whitish inside. It has a white chin and a white spot on each side of the dark muzzle. A mature buck weighs from forty to fifty pounds. There are no signs of horns in first year fawns; in the second year they make their appearance as simple unbranched prongs. The third year the horns are forked, a short tine pointing forwards; those of the fourth year have an additional tine directed backwards, and this marks the full complication of their structure. In later years they have the same general design, but, of course, are each year larger; at their maximum they are only eight or nine inches long, and are nearly upright. Small and primitive though these horns are, they are very effective weapons, and there have been occasions when they were used with fatal effect against human victims. They have no canine teeth.