The range of the roebuck extends from the British Isles to Spain and Italy in the south and to southern Scandinavia in the north, while eastwards it stretches across Poland and the south of Russia at least as far as the Caucasus. In the Altai and certain other parts of Siberia it is, however, replaced by a much larger, paler-coloured species with more thickly haired ears, commonly known as the Siberian roe (Capreolus pygargus), of which a local race inhabits the Tian Shan range. Still farther east, in Manchuria and Mongolia, we come upon a smaller and redder species, the Manchurian roebuck (C. manchuricus, or bedfordi), which is more like the European roe, the red coat being exchanged for one of olive-brown or grey in winter.
In former days roebuck were doubtless distributed all over Great Britain; but by the middle of the eighteenth century they appear to have been killed off everywhere, except in the highlands of Scotland. Later on, with the increase of game-preservation, they have reasserted themselves, and spread over the lowlands of southern Scotland, as well as parts of the north of England. In North Wales they were reintroduced into Vaynol Park in 1874; and they have likewise been turned down in the Blackmoor Vale of Dorsetshire, where they are now once more wild.
In height, a good roebuck will stand fully 26 inches at the shoulder; while in weight he will turn the scale at 60 lb., if in first-rate condition. On the Continent these deer are generally hunted by means of beating the woods, where the guns are stationed along the tracks by which the roe pass to their feeding-grounds. Roe-venison, which is in best condition during winter, is generally regarded as inferior to that of either the red or the fallow deer.
THE REINDEER
(Rangifer tarandus)
THE reindeer, the ren of the Swedes, is by far the most valuable member of the deer tribe, as it furnishes the Laps and many of the tribes of northern Asia not only with food, raiment, and leather, but likewise serves as a beast of draught and burden to transport them and their food across the inhospitable regions which form their home. Reindeer are likewise in all probability the most numerous in individuals of any of the Cervidæ, occurring in vast herds on the high fjells of Scandinavia, while in many parts of North America, where they are known as caribou, they are met with in countless thousands, if not indeed in millions.
But it is not only in these two respects that reindeer are worthy of special notice, for they are the only members of the deer tribe in which antlers are carried by both sexes, those of the females being, however, considerably smaller than those of the males; while they are further remarkable for the early period of life at which these appendages make their first appearance. Then, again, the antlers, as is well shown in the illustration, are quite unlike those of any other deer; generally having the two pairs of front tines more or less branched and unsymmetrical, while the main beam sweeps backwards and then forwards in a bold curve, frequently giving off a single back-tine at the middle of the arch, and always carrying a number of tines on the hind edge of the upper portion.
Reindeer have a circumpolar distribution, except that they are naturally absent from Alaska; and in the former respect therefore agree with elk, although their range extends much farther north, and is proportionately curtailed in the south.
In all respects these deer are admirably adapted to a climate of intense severity and a life for months at a time amid snow and ice. Their coats are of great thickness and density, the hairs growing so close together as to produce a structure recalling much elongated velvet-pile. In the stags the throat is further protected by a fringe or ruff of long hair; and in both sexes the main pair of hoofs is very large and deeply cleft, so as to afford as big a surface as possible to prevent sinking deeply in the snow, while further support is afforded by the unusually large size of the small supplemental pair of hoofs. With these powerful hoofs, reindeer in winter scrape away the snow to uncover the reindeer-moss (Cladonia rangiferina), which at this season forms their main or only food-supply. In summer, however, they eat grass and herbage, as well as the buds and young shoots of dwarf birch.
