THE CHINESE WATER DEER 971 



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In Scotland roedeer are found chiefly in the woods, or on the im- 

 mediately adjacent moors, but never wander far out on the open hills, 

 although they will venture n to the cultivated lands in search of food. They feed 

 in the early morning and toward evening, and generally associate in small family 

 parties, while they make regular tracks through the woods to their feeding grounds. 

 Their usual food is grass and other herbage, as well as the young shoots of such 

 trees and bushes as they are able to reach. The speed of the roe is not great; but 

 the animal is a great leaper, and, when running, its usual pace is a bounding gallop. 



The antlers of the adult bucks are shed about the end of the year, and the new 

 ones are generally fully developed by the latter part of February. The pairing sea- 

 son takes place during July and August, at which time the bucks are exceedingly 

 pugnacious. Scrope relates that in the summer of 1820 two were found dead in a 

 hollow after one of these contests, lying one on the top of the other, with the antlers 

 of the one firmly driven into the shoulder of the other, and vice versd. The fawns are 

 born in the spring, usually early in May; and in Scotland about one doe out of five 

 or six will produce two fawns at a birth in favorable seasons. No account of the 

 roe would be complete without some reference to the extraordinary fact that 

 although the pairing season takes place in July or August, and the young are not 

 produced till the following May, yet the period of gestation is only five months. 

 The explanation of this appears to be that the ovum lies dormant for some four and 

 a half months, that is until December, after which it develops in the ordinary man- 

 ner. 



Certain extinct deer found in the Pliocene deposits of the Continent have been 

 considered to belong to the same genus as the roe. 



THE CHINESE WATER DEER 

 Genus Hydropotes 



Among the tall reeds fringing the banks of the Yang-tse-Kiang, there occur 

 numbers of a small deer 

 differing from any of the 

 species hitherto noticed in 

 that while both sexes are 

 totally devoid of antlers, the 

 males are provided with 

 long scimiter-like tusks in 

 the upper jaw, as shown in 

 the figure on this page. 

 This deer is the Chinese 

 water deer (Hydropotes iner- 



. . , . , ^ .. SKULL OF THE CHINESE WATER DEER WITH PART OF THE UPPER 



mzs), which in both these JAW CUT AWAY TQ SHQW THE BASE op THE TUSK 

 features resembles the musk (From sir v. Brooke, PTOC. zooi. soc., 1872.) 



deer, although in other re- 

 spects it is allied to the more typical representatives of the present section of the family. 



