Pere David's Deer 259 



dress has been assumed ; the change from the winter to the summer coat 

 usually taking place during the latter part of April. In unusually mild 

 winters, like that of 1882, when the snowfall is small and local, the 

 Siberian roe does not migrate at all, and collects in small bands instead of 

 in large herds. 



The cry of the bucks in the pairing-season is of the same bark-like 

 character as that of the European roe, although said to be louder and 

 deeper. It is compared by Mr. Littledale to the cry of the Indian 

 barking-deer or muntjac. 



PERE DAVID'S MILOU DEER 



[E/ap/ii/riis da-i'hiianus) 

 (Plate V. Fig. i) 



It may seem somewhat illogical to include among " game animals " a 

 species now represented apparently only by a few individuals kept in a 

 state of semi-domestication, and that, too, in countries far removed from 

 its existing habitat. Nevertheless as this deer — the mi-lou of the Chinese 

 — was kept until recently in the park of the Emperor of China as an 

 animal of chase, and may even yet be found living in some part of that 

 vast empire, its exclusion from the present volume would be somewhat 

 difficult to justify. 



The existence of the niilou deer was first made known to science by 

 the great Tibetan traveller the Abbe (then Pere) David, who in 1865 

 obtained the skin of a specimen from the herd kept at that time in the 

 Imperial Park at Pekin. This skin, with the skull and antlers, was sent 

 to Paris, where it was described in 1866 bv the late Professor Milne- 

 Edwards. At the time of Pere David's visit there appears to have been a 



