972 THE UNGULATES, OR HOOFED MAMMALS 



The Chinese water deer is of the approximate dimensions of the Indian mtmtjac 

 (P- 953); and is a long-bodied and short-limbed creature, with light reddish-brown 

 fur. One of the most remarkable peculiarities about this small deer is that the does 

 produce from three to six fawns at a birth. The pelage of the young is faintly 

 marked with white spots, arranged in ill-defined rows. The number of young pro- 

 duced, coupled with the absence of antlers in the bucks, indicates that the Chinese 

 water deer is in all probability a survivor from a very ancient type of the Deer 

 family. These deer are commonly found on the Yang-tse-Kiang in parties of two 

 or three. When disturbed, they arch their backs and scud away at a great pace in 

 a series of quick leaps. They are usually killed with buckshot. 



The resemblance of the skull of the male water deer to that of the musk deer, 

 is merely due to both forms being apparently direct descendants of the common 

 ancestral type, from which the more specialized members of the family have been 

 evolved, it being well ascertained that in most or all of the early Tertiary deer the 

 males were devoid of antlers and furnished with long upper tusks. When antlers 

 were developed to their full extent, so as to become efficient weapons of defense, the 

 need for tusks disappeared, and the tusks consequently dwindled or were lost. 

 The muntjacs, in which the antlers are short, present a kind of middle stage of 

 evolution, the tusks having become much smaller than in the Chinese water deer, 

 though larger than in many species of superior size. 



THE AMERICAN DEER 

 Genus Cariacus 



With the exception of the wapita, the reindeer, and the elk, which are either 

 closely allied to, or identical with, Old- World types, the whole of the deer of 

 America differ essentially from those of Asia and Europe, and are referred (with the 

 exception of one small species which forms a genus by itself) to a totally distinct 

 genus, Cariacus. 



These deer resemble the reindeer in the structure of the bones of the lower part 

 of the fore-limb, and also in that in the dry skull the aperture of the nasal passage is 

 completely divided by a longitudinal vertical partition -of bone. The latter feature 

 is, indeed, peculiar to the reindeer and the American deer, and serves at once to dis- 

 tinguish their skulls from those of any species of the genus Cervus. 



The American deer are, however, still better distinguished from their Old- 

 World cousins, by the characteristics of their antlers, which are either in the form of 

 simple spikes, or are divided in a fork-like manner, with the anterior prong directed 

 forward, and no brow-tine. These characteristic features are well shown in the 

 accompanying figures, from which it will be seen that while in one case the two 

 prongs of the antler may be nearly equally developed (A], in another the anterior 

 prong (a) may be greatly developed at the expense of the posterior (), as in the 

 middle figure. It will also be seen that there may be either a large or small 

 subbasal tine (c) rising from the inner side of the front of the antler, some 



