446 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



The pitfall is the chief means employed by natives to capture this deer, 

 though they also resort to driving and shooting. . . . 



My friend Mr. Jacobus, who resided in Vladivostok for some time, informs 

 me that some of the Russians there have immense farms of these deer, which 

 they keep for the sake of their horns, and which are allowed to roam at will 

 over very extensive forested grounds. The number of head so kept runs into 

 thousands. 



South China Sika; Kopsch's Deer 



CERVUS NIPPON KOPSCHI Swinhoe 



Cervus kopschi Swinhoe, Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1873, p. 574, 1873. ("De- 

 partment of Kienchang, on the eastern side of this province (Kiangse), 

 bordering on Fokien," China.) 



This deer of the lower Yangtze Basin is apparently facing 

 extinction. 



The upper parts are brown, mottled with light yellowish brown; 

 a dark median dorsal stripe from crown to rump, with a row of 

 indistinct white spots along each border; shoulders, flanks, and 

 thighs light purplish brown; head, neck, and outer surface of ears 

 brown; hair on neck rather coarse, on abdomen long and curly; 

 belly and inside of limbs brownish white to white; a deep brown 

 median line on breast ; glandular metatarsal spot grizzled black and 

 white, with a buff border; upper surface of tail black. Height at 

 shoulder, about 34 inches. (Swinhoe, 1873, pp. 574-575.) 



Swinhoe (1873, p. 574) had reports of this deer from the moun- 

 tains along the border of Anwhei and Chekiang, where "men from 

 the Fokien province came yearly ... to hunt Stags for their velvet, 

 which is greatly valued for its medical properties .... At Kiu- 

 kiang, up the Yangtse river, . . . now and then dead antlered Deer 

 were brought into the market ... for sale during the winter." 



According to Wallace (1915, p. 171), "Kopsch's deer . . . is . . . 

 found in the province of Anwhei. Commander Hon. R. 0. Bridge- 

 man tells me he spent the greater part of two years trying to obtain 

 a specimen in the Feng-huan-shan and Wei-yao-shan ranges. 

 Major M'Neill also hunted them without success, though Europeans 

 are said to have killed them. They inhabit rough, stony bush-clad 

 hills about 4,000 feet high, and always keep in the densest cover. 

 Commander Bridgeman writes : The stags I saw generally had eight 

 points, but I saw certainly one with fourteen.' ' : 



The British Museum has specimens from Chin-teh and Tai-Kung- 

 Shan, Anwhei (Lydekker, 1915, vol. 4, p. 115). Sowerby (1937, 

 p. 251) writes: 



The beautiful spotted Kopsch's deer, which once ranged over a wide area 

 in the Lower Yangtze Valley and southward into Chekiang and Kiangsi 

 Provinces, is now all but extinct. It is to be found only in a more or less 



