The roe-buck differs also from the stag in his natural appetites, inclinations, and whole habits of living. Instead of herding together, they live in separate families; the sire, dam, and young, form a little community, and never admit a stranger into it. All other animals of the deer kind are inconstant in their amours, but the roe-deer never forsake each other. As the females generally produce two fawns, one of each sex, they are brought up together, and acquire an attachment so strong, that they never separate, unless by some misfortune. This attachment is something more than love, for though they are always together, they do not feel the ardour of the rut more than fifteen days in the year, that is, from the end of October to about the middle of November. They are not at that time like the stag, overloaded with fat; they have no strong smell, no fury, nothing, in short, which alters their state; the only observable difference is, that they drive away their fawns; the buck forcing them off to make room, as it were, for a succeeding progeny. When the rutting season is over, however, the fawns return to their dams, and remain with them some time, after which they quit them entirely to form separate families of their own. 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 already observed, go more than eight, which is alone sufficient to prove their difference of species, that they can never intermix, nor produce an intermediate race. In this respect, as well as in figure and make, they approach the species of the goat, as much as they recede from that of the stag; for the goat goes with young nearly the same time, and perhaps the roe-deer ought to be regarded as a wild goat, which, by feeding solely on trees, carries branches on his brows instead of horns. When about to bring forth, the female separates from the male, and conceals herself in the deepest recesses of the woods, to avoid the wolf, who is her most dangerous enemy. At the expiration of ten or twelve days, the fawns attain sufficient strength to follow her. When threatened with any danger, she hides them in some deep thicket, and by way of preserving them presents herself to be chaced. But all her care is not sufficient to secure them from being frequently carried off by dogs and wolves. This is indeed their most critical time, when this species, which is not very numerous, suffers the greatest destruction, as I have found by experience. I often reside in a part of the country (Montbard in Burgundy) famous for roe-bucks, and where not a spring passes without a great number being brought me, some taken alive by men, and others killed by dogs; insomuch that, without counting those killed by wolves, I am convinced more are destroyed in the month of May than in all the rest of the year; and I have observed, for more than twenty-five years, that as if there subsisted a perfect equilibrium