skin. He says : “ I was going round my beat, (at that time above Loch Etive, Argyle)
one afternoon in summer and saw a roebuck feeding on the hill-side several hundred yards
from a wood. A ll o f a sudden he dropped in his tracks as i f shot, and the next moment a
golden eagle just missed the place where the buck had been standing, and swung up into the
air again. The buck, however,’ did not stay where he was, but dashed off roaring with all
his might in abject fear. The eagle immediately got up steam and was: after him ; the
quarry again dropped to the ground just as the eagle was about to seize him by the head.
These manoeuvres were repeated again and again, and the roe kept roaring with fear all the
time he was running until he fairly baffled thé clumsy eagle and found sanctuary in the cover.”
The venison o f roe is not much esteemed in this country, though in Germany it it;
thought very highly of. It, however, makes excellent soup ; to t perhaps it is better as
“ a gravin’ baste to send to your friens.”
Varieties are very rare in this species, and from my notes I give the following instances
of whole or partial albinoes :— A two-year-old buck, which was cream colour, was killed at
Cawdor about the year 1880, and another was also shot about the same time at Brodie ;
whilst a pied doe, o f which I give an illustration, was killed at F oyers, Inverness-shire, a
few years ago, and is now in my collection. An adult buck which was said to be pure white
was well known in the woods by Kinross in 1894, and a friend who hunts with the Fifeshire
hounds told me that the pack got on to this buck one day and ran him to Ladybank, where
he was left and the hounds whipped off. I do not think he has been killed, or I fancy I
should have heard o f it.
For some time the Hon. Walter Rothschild deposited a handsome white variety
of this species in the Zoological Gardens, and a curious fact about this animal was that one
winter he was white, and the following summer was the natural red, reverting again to
white next winter, and back to half-white and half-red in the following summer, when he
was killed. A year or two ago a white roebuck appeared at Dalness, causing some alarm in
the district, as there is an old Highland superstition that ill luck will befall the owner o f the
estate should such a thing occur.
Melanie varieties o f any birds or animals are very rare, but it is interesting to know
that at Steinhuder Meer, in the north o f Hanover, a country o f moor and peat, all the roes
are blackish brown, which even the “ tourist ” recognises at a glance. There is a black
variety o f the roe in the British Museum from Westphalia, and the one in the possession o f
Mr. Walter Rothschild, a photograph o f which he kindly sends me, is from Germany,
though no locality is given.
The reader may perhaps find fault with me for giving pictures o f this variety and one
or two German roe heads, on the ground o f their not being British; but though such
abnormalities have not, so far as I am aware, occurred in this country, they might do so
any day, and therefore could be easily recognised in this work.
CHA P T E R X
R O E - S T A L K IN G A N D R O E H E A D S
F rom the sportsman’s point o f view our little friend the roe hardly ever receives fair treatment
or the consideration that he justly deserves ; for that -reason I wish to put in a plea on
his behalf. T h e rifle is the proper weapon with which to kill him where it is possible to do
so, and there are plenty o f estates in the North where, instead o f the annual butchery o f does
and calves, really capital sport could be obtained with a little trouble. Even what is called
a roe-hunt would have its justification were all those who take part in it good shots and
properly armed; but the average man is not a good shot ; and, added to the fact that