ZOOLOGY. 69 



by a shout, when she turned her head directly toward him, and he fired at the distance of two 

 hundred yards. The deer went crashing off through the brush, and as we had plainly seen 

 the plash of the ball in the water a long way beyond where .she stood, we thought he had missed. 

 Bartee, however, knew better what dependence to place on his eye and his Hawkins' rifle, and 

 beckoning us to come on, he ran forward to take her trail. We followed, but with no great 

 confidence of success. On reaching the trail, we found it blood-marked, and, before we had 

 gone a dozen rods further, the wild death cry of the deer gave us the best possible evidence of 

 the accuracy of Bartee' s aim. When we reached the deer she was quite dead ; the ball had 

 entered the breast, traversing the lungs, and the heart diagonally, and passed out near the last 

 rib. It was a doe of rather large size, evidently suckling a fawn which she had left "cached" 

 somewhere in the manzanita bushes ; and, having gone to the river to drink, was returning with 

 maternal haste to her charge, when the fatal bullet had deprived her of life. The incident 

 suggested some sad reflections not readily dissipated by thoughts of our necessities, which had 

 become pressing ; but we were partially consoled by the assurance from Bartee that fawns, at 

 that season, were old enough to shift for themselves. 



This deer was new to me, and entirely different from any I had seen in California, as well as 

 from the Virginian deer of the eastern States. From my notes, made at the time, I take tho 

 following description : 



Wednesday, August 29. — Bartee killed suckling doe of rather large size, compared with Cali- 

 fornian deer. Ears very large, (eight inches long,) rump sloping. Shedding summer coat, 

 composed of long, coarse, reddish brown hair, which was of much the character of the hair of 

 the antelope, like threads cut short off. Under coat soft and fine, of a bluish grey; white patch 

 on rump, like that on antelope, but less broad. Tail of moderate length, (nine inches,) reddish- 

 brown on top, white on sides, and black at tip, without hair below. Gland of hind legs very 

 long. Though animal was poor, the flesh was very tender and well flavored. 



This, though so great a novelty to the Californians of our party that they suggested that it 

 must be a hybrid between the antelope and the Californian black-tailed deer, was the mule deer, 

 Cervus macrotis, Say. I was then with a detachment detailed for a special purpose, and had no 

 antiseptics for the preservation of the skin, and the zoologist of our party was in our depot camp. 

 I carried the skin until it began to decompose, and I was obliged to content myself with the 

 head and skin of head, legs and tail. These I preserved, and they coincide with Say's descrip- 

 tion of those parts in the mule deer of the upper Missouri. 



The physical geography of the Des Chutes basin unites that territory to the Kocky mountain 

 desert, and its fauna generally will be found to have greater affinity with that of the Bocky 

 mountains and upper Missouri than with that of California. It is not surprising, therefore, 

 that we find O. macrotis westward to the base of the Cascade mountains, or, in other words, to 

 the base of the wall which forms the western limit to the enclosure of the interior basin. 



CEBVUS COLUMBIANUS, Kich. 



Black-tailed Deer. 



Cervus macrotis, var. columhianus, Ricuardsox, F. B. Am. I, 1829, 255; pi. xx. 



Cervus columhianus, Baird, Gen. Rep. Mammals, 1857, 659. 



Cervus macrotis, Kich. F. Bor. Am. I, 1829, 254 ; pi. xx. 



Cervus leicisii, Peale, Mammalia and Birds U. S. Ex. Ex. 1848, 39. 



Cervus Richardsonii, Aid. & Bacii. N. Am. Quad. II, 1851, 211.— Id. Ill, 1853, 27 ; pi. ovi. 



f Cervus (Cariacas) punctulatus, Gray, I'r. Zool. Soc. Lond. XVIII, 1850, 239; pi. xxuii. — In. Knoivsley Mcnag. 



1850, (i7. 

 Black-lailed fallow deer , Lewis & CLAKK. 



