the conduct by which their efforts seem to be regulated; they attack with order, and support the assault with courage; mutually assist each other, retire, rally, and never yield the victory upon a single defeat; for the battle is daily renewed till the weakest party are quite defeated, from which time they are obliged to retire to some secluded part of the park, and be contented with the worst pasturage. They love elevated and hilly countries. When hunted they do not fly far before the hounds, like the stag, but study entirely how to escape from the dogs by stratagem; when pressed and heated they will plunge into the water, though it is very rare that they will take to a great river. In the chace, therefore, between the fallow-deer and the stag, there is no essential difference; their instincts and artifices are the same, though more put into practice by the former; which, together with the lightness of his step, render it more difficult for the dogs to avoid being deceived. The fallow-deer is easily tamed and feeds upon many things which the stag refuses; he also preserves his venison better; nor does it appear that the rutting, followed by a long and severe winter, exhausts him, but he continues nearly in the same state throughout the year. He browzes closer than the stag, for which reason he is more prejudicial to young trees, and often strips them too close for recovery. The young deer eat faster and with more avidity than the old. At the second year they seek the female, and, like the stag, are fond of variety. The doe goes with young eight months and some days; she commonly produces one fawn, sometimes two, but very rarely three. They are capable of engendering at the age of two years to that of fifteen or sixteen; and in fine, they resemble the stag in all his natural habits, and the greatest difference between them is the duration of their lives. From the testimony of hunters it has been remarked that stags live to the age of 35 or 40 years, and from the same authority we understand that the fallow-deer does not live more than 20. As they are smaller than the stag, it is probable that their growth is soon completed. In all animals the duration of life is proportioned to that of the growth, and not to that of gestation, for here the gestation is the same; and in other species, as the ox, though the time of gestation be long, that of the duration of life is very short; whence it follows that we ought not to calculate the duration of life by the time of gestation, but by that which Nature has required for perfecting the growth, reckoning from the birth to the almost entire expansion of the body. THE ROE-BUCK.[G] [G] In French _chevreuil_; in Greek [Greek: dorchas]; in Latin _capreolus_, _capriolus_; in Italian _capriolo_; in Spanish _zorlito_; in Portuguese _cobra montes_; in German _rehe_; in Swedish _radiur_; in Danish _raa diur_.