The summer and winter dresses of the species, as in so many of the deer of the temperate zone, are strikingly different; the summer coat being bright foxy red, while in winter the general colour of the fur is olive-brown. At the latter season, at any rate, there is a conspicuous white patch on the rump, which serves as a guide to the hinder members of a family or party when fleeing from danger. The beautiful fawns are marked with a comparatively small number of longitudinal rows of white or yellowish spots and streaks upon a rufous ground; this indicating that the roe is descended from deer of which the adults were similarly spotted in summer. The black moustache-mark on the muzzle, and the white tip to the chin, are other features of these elegant little deer. The bucks attain their full development in the third year, when the antlers, which commence as simple spikes, first acquire their third tines. Adult bucks usually shed their antlers about Christmas, and the new ones, which increase in size, although not in complexity till the sixth year, are in most cases fully developed by the end of February. The fawns, of which there may be either one, two, or three at a birth, usually make their appearance in the world in May, at any rate in the British Isles. The favourite haunts of roe-deer are woods and forests on the plains, where under-wood is abundant, from which they issue forth at evening to graze in meadows and corn-lands. On the Continent these deer are, however, also found in forests on the lower mountains, as well as on the spurs of the higher ranges. As a rule, they associate for the greater part of the year in small family parties; such parties, according to continental writers, usually consisting of a buck with two or three does and their fawns, although it has been stated that roe are strictly monogamous. When put up in covert, they generally start off at a gallop with enormous flying leaps, but their speed is not great. They are also excellent swimmers, and can likewise climb rocks to a certain extent. Their food comprises grass, herbs, berries, and the young shoots of bushes and trees; ivy-leaves, where they are to be obtained, forming a favourite article of diet. [Illustration] 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.