HABIT AND DOMESTICATION. 309 



powers were so fatally manifest. The second generation of the 

 Ceylon deer are good breeders, but I think are not as hardy as the 

 first. At least I have lost two the past summer, one in yeaning, 

 and the other when I was absent, and from an unknown cause. 

 The fact that they never saw snow till they came into my 

 grounds, when they were fully adult, and have borne three win- 

 ters, the two first very severe, without injury, except the loss of 

 small portions of the ears, would indicate that they have hardy 

 constitutions, naturally ; but that two of the second generation of 

 the Ceylon deer have had the swelling under the head indicates 

 a tendency to weakness ; but the fact again, that both recovered 

 without treatment, while the disease, if left to take its course, 

 has always proved fatal to the common deer, encourages the be- 

 lief that they possess a large amount of vitality. Certain it is 

 that they have been much more healthy in domestication than 

 either the mule deer or the Columbia deer, although much further 

 removed from their native habitat, and from the torrid zone to a 

 rigorous climate, where they have endured a temperature at times 

 forty or fifty degrees below the freezing point of water, while the 

 home of the latter is at least as cold as it is here. It is safe to 

 say then, that they are capable of enduring greater changes in 

 the conditions of life than the larger species, which ai"e sure to 

 die in a few years, upon being brought from the Pacific coast, 

 or even the Rocky Mountains, to the east of the Mississippi 

 River. 



