AS the stag is the noblest inhabitant of the wood, he occupies the deepest shades of the forest, and the most elevated ridges of those mountains which are covered with lofty trees. The roe deer, as if inferior in species, contents [120] himself with a humbler residence, and generally dwells among the thick foliage of young brushwood. But, if he is inferior to the stag in dignity, strength, and stature, he is endowed with more gracefulness, vivacity, and courage.* He is superior in gaiety, neatness, and sprightliness. His figure is ore elegant and handsome. His eyes are more brilliant and animated. His limbs are more nimble, his movements quicker, and he bounds, seemingly without effort, with equal vigour and agility. His coat, or hair, is always clean, smooth, and glossy. He never wallows in the mire, like the stag. He delights in dry and elevated situations, where the air is purest. He is likewise more crafty, conceals himself with greater address, is more difficult to trace, and derives superior resources from instinct: For, though he has the misfortune to leave behind him a stronger scent than the stag, which redoubles the ardour and appetite of the dogs, he knows how to withdraw himself from their pursuit, by the rapidity with which he begins his flight, and by his numerous doublings. He delays not his arts of defence till his strength fails him; but, as soon as he finds that the first efforts of a rapid chace [sic] have been unsuccessful, he repeatedly returns on his former steps; and, after confounding, by these opposite movements, [121] the direction he has taken, after intermixing the present with the past emanations from his body, he rises from the earth by a great bound, and, retiring to a side, he lies down flat on his belly, and, in this immoveable situation, he allows the whole troop of his deceived enemies to pass very near him.
The roe deer differs from the stag and fallow deer in disposition, temperament, manners, and almost every natural habit. Instead of associating in herds, they live in separate families. The father, mother, and young, go together, and never mix with strangers. They are constant in their amours, and never unfaithful like the stag. As the females generally produce two fawns, the one male and the other female, these young animals, brought up and nourished together, acquire so strong a mutual affection, that they never quit each other, unless one of them meets with a misfortune, which never ought to separate lovers. This attachment is more than love; for, though always together, the feel the ardour of the rut but once a year, and it continues only fifteen days, commencing at the end of October, and ending before the fifteenth day of November. They are not then, like the stag, overloaded with fat: They have no strong smell, no fury, in a word, nothing that can change the state of their bodies. During this period, they indeed suffer not their fawns to remain with them. The father drives them off, as if he meant [122] to oblige them to yield their place to those which are to succeed, and to form new families for themselves. However, after the rutting season is past, the fawns return to their mother, and remain with her some time; after which they separate forever, and remove to a distance from the place which gave them birth.
The female goes with young five months and a half, and brings forth about the end of April or beginning of May. The hinds, as formerly remarked, go with young above eight months; and this difference alone is sufficient to prove, that these animals are so remote from each other in species, as to prevent their ever intermixing or producing an intermediate race. By this difference, as well as that of figure and size, they approach the goat as much as they recede from the stag; for the goat goes with young nearly the same time, and the roe deer may be regarded as a wild goat, which, feeding solely on wood, carries wood instead of horns. The female, when about to bring forth, separates from the male. To avoid the wolf, who is her most dangerous enemy, she conceals herself in the deepest recesses of the forest. In ten or twelve days, the fawns acquire strength sufficient to enable them to follow her. When threatened with danger, she hides them in a close thicket, and, to preserve them, presents herself to be chaced. But, notwithstanding all her care and anxiety, the young are sometimes carried off by men, dogs, or [123] wolves. This is indeed the time of their greatest destruction. Of this species, which is not very numerous, I know, from experience, that more are destroyed in the month of May, than during all the rest of the year. I often live in a part of the country* where the roe deer are greatly esteemed. Many fawns are annually brought me alive by men, and other killed by dogs, without reckoning those which are devoured by wolves: And I have observed, during the space of more than twenty-five years, that, as if there were a perfect equilibrium between the causes of destruction and renovation, their number is always nearly equal in the same districts. It is not difficult to count them; for they are no where numerous, and they live separately in distinct families: In a coppice, for example, of 100 acres, there will be one family, or from three to five individuals; for a female, which generally produces two fawns, sometimes brings forth but one, and sometimes, though very seldom, three. In another district, of double the extent, there will be seven or eight, that is, two families; and I have remarked, that each district always harbours an equal number, excepting when the winters have been extremely rigorous and long: In this case, the whole family is destroyed; but it is replaced by another the following year; and those districts, for which they have a predilection, are always inhabited nearly by an [124] equal number. It is alledged, however, that, in general, their number is diminishing. There are whole provinces, it must be acknowledged, of France, where not one of them is to be found. Though common in Scotland,* there are none in England. They are very rare in Italy; and they are now scarcer in Sweden than formerly, &c. But this effect may have proceeded from the diminution of forests, or from some very severe winter, like that of the year 1709, which almost destroyed the whole roe deer of Burgundy; so that several years passed before the species was recruited. Besides, they are not equally fond of every country; for, in the same countries, they prefer particular places. The love hills, or plains on the tops of mountains. They never stay in the deepest recesses of the forests, nor in the middle of extensive woods; but give the preference to the skirts or projections of woods which are surrounded with cultivated fields, and to open coppices which produce the berry-bearing alder, brambles, &c.
The fawns continue with their parents eight or nine months, and, when separated, about the end of the first years of their age, their first horns begin to appear in the form of two knobs much less than those of the stag. There is still a greater difference between these two animals: The horns of the stag shed in the spring, and are re- [125] newed in summer; but those of the roe deer fall off at the end of autumn, and are replaced in winter. Several causes concur in producing these different effects. In summer, the stag takes a great deal of nourishment, and grows exceedingly fat; he next exhausts himself so much in the rutting season, that the whole winter is necessary to recover his vigour. But, during this season, instead of superabundant nourishment, he is half starved for want of subsistence, and, consequently, his horns cannot begin to shoot till the spring, when his nourishment begins to be redundant. The roe deer, on the contrary, who is never so much wasted, has no occasion for equal reparation; and, as he is never loaded with fat, as no change is produced in him by rutting, but continues always nearly the same, he has at all times a redundance of nourishment; so that even in winter, and a short time after rutting, he sheds and renews his horns. Thus, in all these animals, the redundant organic nourishment, before it is determined to the seminal reservoirs, and forms the seminal fluid, is transferred to the head, and manifests itself externally by the production of horns; in the same manner as in man, the hair and the bear announce and precede the secretion of the seminal fluid: And, it is apparent, that these vegetable productions, as they may be denominated, are formed by a redundant organic substance, but still imperfect, and mixed with brute particles, [126] since they preserve, in their growth and substance, the qualities of vegetables. But the seminal fluid, the production of which is not so early, is a matter purely organic, deprived entirely of its brute particles, and perfectly assimilated to the body of the animal.
When the roe deer has renewed his horns, he rubs them against the trees, like the stag, in order to tear off the skin with which they are covered; and this commonly happens in the month of March, before the trees begin to shoot. Hence it is not the sap of the wood which colours the horns of the roe deer. However, the horns are brown when the animal is brown, and yellow when he is red; and, consequently, the colour of the horns proceeds, as formerly remarked,* solely from the nature of the animal, and the impression of the air. The second horns of the roe have two or three antlers in each side; the third, three or four; the fourth, four or five, and they seldom have more. We distinguish the old ones by the thickness of the stems, the largeness of the bur, of the pearlings, &c. As long as the horns continue soft, they are extremely sensible: Of this I have had a striking example: The young shoot of a roe buck’s horn was cut off with a ball. The animal was stunned, and fell down as if he had been dead. The shooter, who was near, seized him by the foot; but the buck, suddenly recovering [127] his senses and his strength, dragged the man, though he was strong and alert, thirty paces into the wood. After killing him with a knife, we discovered that he had received no other wound. Besides, it is well known, that flies are very troublesome to the stag: When his horns are growing, he retires to the deepest parts of the wood, where the flies are less numerous; because, when they fix upon the tender horns, the irritation they occasion is insupportable. Thus there is an intimate communication between the soft parts of the horns, and the whole nervous system of the animal. The roe buck, who has nothing to apprehend from the flies, because he renews his horns in winter, never retires in this manner; but he walks with caution, and carries his head low, lest he should touch the branches.
In the stag, the fallow deer, and roe buck, the frontal bone has two processes, or eminences, on which the horns rest. These processes begin to shoot at the age of five or six months, soon after acquire their full growth, and, instead of rising higher in proportion as the animal advances in years, they annually sink and diminish; so that, in old stags or roe bucks, the burs are nearly supported upon the frontal bone, the processes of which having then become very broad and short: This is the most certain mark by which the age of these animals can be distinguished. At first sight, this fact appears to [128] be singular, but admits of an easy explanation, when it is considered, that the horns, supported by these processes, press against them during the whole time of growth, which continues for several months every year: Hence these bones, however hard, must become broader and sink lower annually, by the great and long continued pressure they receive from every renewal of the animal’s horns. It is for the same reason, that, though the stems and burs, or rings, always grow thicker in proportion to the animal’s age, the height of the horns and the number of antlers diminish so fast, that, when he is very old, they are only two thick knobs, with very small antlers.
As the female roe goes with young only five months and a half, and as the growth of the fawn is more rapid than that of the stag, the duration of her life is much shorter, seldom extending, I imagine, beyond twelve or fifteen years. I have reared several of them; but could never preserve them above five or six years. They are very delicate in the choice of their food, require a great deal of exercise, fine air, and much room, which is the reason why they are unable, excepting in the first years of the growth, to resist the inconveniencies of a domestic life. To make a male live comfortable, he must be furnished with a female, and a park of a hundred acres. They may be tamed, but can never be rendered obedient or familiar. They always retain a por- [129] tion of their natural wildness, are easily terrified, and then run with such force and precipitation against the walls, that they often break their limbs. However tame they may be, they cannot be trusted; for the males particularly are subject to dangerous caprices; they take an aversion at certain persons, and make furious attacks with their horns, the blows of which are sufficient to knock a man to the ground, after which they continue to tread on him with their feet. The roe buck bellows not so frequently, nor with so loud or so strong a voice, as the stag. The young ones utter a short and plaintive cry, mi…..mi, by which they indicate their want of food. The sound is easily imitated; and the mother, deceived by the call, will come up to the very muzzle of the hunter’s gun.
In winter, the roe bucks frequent the thickest coppices, and feed upon brambles, broom, heath, the catkins of the hazel, willow, &c. In spring, they repair to the more open brushwood, and eat the buds and young leaves of almost every tree. This warm food ferments in their stomachs, and intoxicates them to such a degree that they are easily surprised. They know not where they are going, and not unfrequently come out of the wood, and sometimes approach flocks of cattle, and the habitations of men. In summer, they dwell in the more elevated coppices, from which they seldom depart, excepting in very dry weather, when they go to drink at [130][PLATE LXVIII here] [PLATE LXIX here] some fountain; for, when the dews abound, or the leaves are moistened with rain, they never drink. They are delicate in the choice of their food; they eat not with avidity, like the stag, and they seldom approach the cultivated fields, because they prefer the berry-bearing alder and bramble to rain or pot herbs or any kind.
Though the flesh of these animals be excellent food; yet it admits of much choice. The quality of their venison depends chiefly on the country they inhabit; and even the best countries produce good and bad kinds. The flesh of the brown roe buck is finer than that of the red. All the males, after the age of two years, have hard and ill-tasted flesh; but that of the females, though farther advanced in years, is more tender. The flesh of the fawns, when very young, is loose and soft; but, at the age of eighteen months, it is in its highest state of perfection. Those which live in plains and valleys are not good; those that come fro moist countries are still worse; those brought up in parks are insipid; and, lastly, there are no good roe bucks but those of dry and elevated countries, interspersed with hills, woods, cultivated and fallow lands, where they enjoy plenty of air, food, freedom, and solitude; for those which have been disturbed are meagre, and the flesh of those that have been often hunted is dry and insipid.
This species, which is less numerous than that of the stag, and very rare in many parts of Eu- [131] rope, seems to be much more abundant in America, where there are two varieties, the red, which is the largest, and the brown, which has a white spot behind, and is smaller: And, as they are found in the northern as well as the southern parts of America, it is probable that they differ more from each other than from those of Euorpe. They are very common, for example, in Louisiana,* and larger than those of France. They are likewise found in Brazil; for the animal called Cujuaca-apara differs not more from our roe buck than the stag of Canada from our stag. There is indeed a little variation in the figure of the horns, as appears from Perrault’s figure of the Canadian stag, compared with the description and figure of the Brasilian stag given by Piso. “In Brazil,” says Piso, “there are roe bucks, of which some have no horns, and are called Cujauacu-été, and others have horns, and are called Cujuacu-apara. The latter are smaller than the former; their hair is smooth, glossy, and mixed with brown and white, especially when the animals are young; for the white is effaced with age. The foot is divided into two black toes, upon each of which there is a smaller one superinduced; the tail is short; the [132] eyes large and black; the nostrils open; the horns are of a middle size, and fall off annually. The female goes with young five or six months. They may be tamed,”* &c. Margraave adds, “that the horns of the apara have three branches, and that the inferior branch is longest and divided into two.” From these descriptions, it is apparent, that the apara is only a variety of our roe buck; and Ray suspects,+ that the Cujaucu-apara is the male, and the cujuacu-été the female, and that they both belong to the same species. I should willingly assent to Mr Ray’s opinion, if Piso had not expressly said, that those which have horns are smaller than the other kind. It is not probable that, at Brazil, the females of this species should be larger than the males, since every where else they are smaller. At the same time, though I believe the Cujuacu-apara to be only a variety of our roe buck, to which we may also add the Capreolus marinus of Johnston, I shall not decide concerning the Cujuacu-été till farther information be obtained. [133]
It has frequently been mentioned, in my original work, that the common colours of wild animals are yellow, brown, and grey, and that the domestic state gives rise to white fallow deer, white rabbits, &c. I find, however, that Nature alone sometimes produces the same effect upon wild animals. M. l’Abbé de la Villette informs me, that a man belonging to his brother’s estate, near Orgelet in Franche-comté, brought him two old roe deers, one of which was of the common colour, and the other, being a female, was white as milk, and had no black but on the hoofs and the extremity of the nose.*
Roe bucks, similar to those of Europe, are found throughout all North America; only they are larger, and their size increases in proportion as the climate becomes more temperate. The roe bucks of Louisiana are generally double the size of those of France.+ M. de Fontenelle adds, that they are easily tamed. In this he is supported by the evidence of M. Kalm, who mentions a roe buck which went daily to the [134] wood in quest of food, and returned to his house in the evening.* But, in South America, this species is subject to great varieties. M. de la Borde, King’s physician at Cayenne, says, “that they have there four kinds of stags, called indiscriminately, both males and females, by the name of hinds. The first kind, called wood or red hinds, keep perpetually in the thickest parts of the woods, to avoid being tormented by the flies. This kind is taller and thicker than that called the savanna hind, and yet is exceeded in size by the barallou hind, which is the second species, and of the same colour with the wood hind. When the males are old, their horns consist of only one branch, and they at no period exceed four or five inches in height. These barallou hinds are rare, and combat the wood hinds. In these two species, at the side of each nostril, there are two considerable glands which secrete a white, fetid humour.”
“The third species is called the savanna hind. Its coat is grayish, and its limbs and body longer than the preceding. M. de la Borde was assured by the hunters, that the savanna hind had no glands on the nostrils, and that it was less savage, and even so curious as to approach men.”
“The fourth species is the savanna hind, which is smaller and more common than the other three. They are no so wild, and their [135] horns are longer and more palmated or branched than those of the other three kinds. They are called savanna hinds, because they frequent the watery savannas, and lands covered with marshes.”
“These animals feed upon the manioc, and often destroy the plantations. Their flesh is very tender and well-tasted. Both the old and the young are used as food, and are superior to the European stags. They tame so easily, that they run about the streets of Cayenne, and go out of the town and return, without being afraid of any object. The females even go into the woods in quest of wild males, and afterwards return with their fawns.”
“The caricou is the smallest; his hair is of a whitish grey colour; and his horns are straight and pointed. He belongs rather to the roe buck than to the stag. He never appears near inhabited places; but is very common in large woods. However, he is easily tamed; and the female brings forth only one fawn every year.”
If the above descriptions be compared with what is afterwards remarked, in the history of the Mazame, or Mexican deer, it will appear, that all these pretended species of stags or hinds are only roe bucks, the varieties of which are more numerous in the New than in the Old Continent. [136] [PLATE LVI here] [PLATE LVII here].
* The roe deer has strong, upright, rugged, and trifurcated horns, from six to eight inches long. The length, from nose to tail, is three feet nine inches; the height before, is two feet three inches; behind, two feet seven inches; the length of the tail is only one inch. The weight of a full grown buck is near 60 lb. The hair in summer is very short and smooth. The ends of the hairs are of a deep red colour, and the bottoms of a dark grey. In winter, the hairs are very long, and hoary at the tips, except on the back, where they are often very dark. The legs are slender; and below the first joint of the hind legs there is a tuft of long hair. The rump, and under side of the tail are white; Pennant, Synops. of quad. p. 53.
The name of the Roe deer in Greek is [a work in Greek letters I can’t reproduce]; in Latin, Capreolus, Capriolus; in Italian, Capriolo; in Spanish, Zorlito, Cabronzillo montes; in Portuguese, Caba montes; in German, Rehe; in Swedish, Ra diur; in Danish Raa-diur; in Scots, Roe-buck.
Dorcas, Aristotelis, Caprea Plinii.
Capra, Capreolus, sive Dorcas; Gesner. Icon. anim. quad. p. 64.
Capriolus; Johnston, Hist. Anim. quad. tab. 3.
Dorcas Scotiae perfamiliaris; Charleton de differentiis animal. p. 9. 12.
Capreolus vulgo. Cervulos silvestris septentrionalis nostras; Raii Synops. quad. p. 89.
Cervus capreolus, cornibus ramosis, teretibus, erectis; summitate bifida, Lynn. Syst. Nat. p. 94.
Cervus minimus, Capreolus, Cervulus, Caprea, cornibus bravibus, ramosis, annuatim deciduis; Klein. quad. hist. nat. p, 24 [n.b.: the printer includes the comma rather than a period at the page number in the Klein entry. Back to page 120].
* When the fawns of the roe deer are attacked, he defends them with courage, and, though smaller, he has strength enough to combat a young stag, and put him to flight; Nouv. Traité de la Venerie, p. 178 [back to page 121]
* At Montbard in Burgundy [back to page 124].
* They are not very common in Scotland; for they exist no where but in what is called the Highlands, or northern mountains of Scotland [Smellie’s note. Back to page 125].
* See above, History of the stag, p. 103 [back to page 127].
* The flesh of the roe buck is much used in Louisiana. This animal is somewhat larger than the European kind, and his horns are similar to those of the stag; but he differs both in the coat and the colour. He serves the inhabitants in place of mutton; Mem. sur la Louisiaine, par M. Dumont, tom. 1. p. 75 [back to page 132].
* Pison. Hist. Brasil. p. 98.
+ Raii Synops. anim. quad. p. 90 [back to page 133].
* Extract of a letter from M. l’Abbé de la Villette a M. de Buffon, dated Lon-le-Saumier, June 17. 1773.
+ Extract of a letter from M. de Fontenelle, King’s physician at New Orleans, to M. de Buffon [back to page 134].
* Voyage de Pierre Kalm, tom. 2. p. 350 [back to page 135].