436 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



"This species appears to be very rare; ever since the description of it 

 first appeared, the man I employed to hunt has been specially look- 

 ing for it, but has only procured this single specimen." 



G. M. Allen remarks (1930, p. 15) : "Special interest . . . attaches 

 to the capture of a third specimen, a male, brought back by the 

 Asiatic Expeditions from Tunglu, Chekiang Province. . . . Prob- 

 ably this is a species close to the verge of extinction, of which a 

 few remain in eastern China." 



Schomburgk's Deer 



RUCERVUS SCHOMBURGKI Blyth 



Rucervus schomburgki Blyth, Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1863, p. 155, 1863. 



("Probably . . . Siam.") 

 FIGS.: Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1863, p. 156, figs.; Blyth, 1868, pp. 837-839, 



figs. 6-12; Lydekker, 18986, p. 194, fig. 53; Lydekker, 1915, vol. 4, p. 98, 



fig. 19; Kemp, 1918, pi. 1; Ward, 1935, p. 20, fig.; Leister, 1935, p. 63, fig.; 



Giihler, 1936, pis. 19, 20. 



Schomburgk's Deer, first introduced to science in 1863, is now on 

 the verge of extinction if not already extinct. It is scarcely known 

 outside of Siam. 



"Height at shoulder about 3 feet 5 inches; hair in winter rather 

 long and coarse. General colour of pelage uniform brown, darkest 

 on the nose and the upper surface of the tail, and lightest on the 

 cheeks and flanks; under-parts, lower surface of tail, and lower lip 

 whitish; a tinge of rufous on the upper lip, the back of the head, 

 and limbs; the hair on the front of the lower part of the fore-leg 

 elongated to form a fringe. Antlers large, complex, smooth, and 

 polished; the brow-tine very long, frequently forked, and arising 

 nearly at a right angle from the beam; the beam very short and 

 more or less laterally compressed, then forking dichotomously, with 

 each of the main branches about equally developed, and again 

 forking in a similar manner, to terminate in long cylindrical tines." 

 (Lydekker, 18986, p. 194.) The record length of antlers, measured 

 on the outside curve, is 35^ inches (Ward, 1935, p. 29). 



Valuable information on this species has been contributed by 

 Kemp (1918), Kloss (1921), Pigot (1929), Bhicharana (1932), and 

 Guehler (1933). More recently the last-mentioned author (Giihler, 

 1936) has furnished a comprehensive summary, from which the 

 following account is mainly derived. 



This, perhaps the rarest of all deer, has never been seen in the 

 wild by a European, although a number of scientific expeditions 

 have sought it in Siam. From 1862 to 1911 eight living examples 

 were known in zoos (at London, Hamburg, Berlin, Koln, Paris, and 

 Shanghai) . The only known mounted specimen in existence is pre- 

 served in Paris; it is doubtless the one that lived in the Jardin des 



