There is scarcely any animal so watchful as the female Deer, as all hunters know by practical experience. It is comparatively easy to deceive the stag who leads the herd, but to evade the eyes and ears of the hinds is a very different business, and taxes all the resources of a practised hunter. If they take such care of the herd in general, it may be imagined that their watchfulness would be multiplied tenfold when the object of their anxiety is their own young. It is in allusion to this well-known characteristic that a passage in the Book of Job refers: "Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve?" (xxxix. 1.) A similar image is used in Psa. xxix. 9. After enumerating the wonders that are done by the voice of the Lord, the thunders and rain torrents, the devastating tempests, the forked lightning, and the earthquake "that shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh," the Psalmist proceeds: "The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests,"--this being as mysterious to the writer as the more conspicuous wonders which he had previously mentioned. So familiar to the Hebrews was the watchful care which the female Deer exercised over her young, that it forms the subject of a powerful image in one of Jeremiah's mournful prophecies: "Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass." (xiv. 5.) To those who understand the habits of the animal, this is a most telling and picturesque image. In the first place, the Hind, a wild animal that could find food where less active creatures would starve, was reduced to such straits that she was obliged to remain in the fields at the time when her young was born, instead of retiring to some sheltered spot, according to her custom. And when it was born, instead of nurturing it carefully, according to the natural maternal instinct, she was forced from sheer hunger to abandon it in order to find a sufficiency of food for herself. That the Deer could be tamed, and its naturally affectionate disposition cultivated, is evident from a passage in the Proverbs (v. 18, 19): "Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe." [Illustration: THE RED DEER. "Canst thou mark when the hinds do calve?"--JOB xxxix. 1.] We might naturally expect that the Rabbinical writers would have much to say on the subject of the Hart and Hind. Among much that is irrelevant to the object of the present work there are a few passages that deserve mention. Alluding to the annual shedding of the Deer's horns, there is a proverb respecting one who ventures his money too freely in trade, that "he has hung it on the stag's horns," meaning thereby that he will never see it again. It is remarkable that in Western Africa there is a proverb of a similar character, the imprudent merchant being told to look for his money in the place where Deer shed their horns.