448 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



the animal was also utilized in the payment of tribute to the Chinese. 

 It was numerous about the mouth of the Ussuri, and extended down 

 the Amur as far as the mouths of the Gorin and the Chelasso 

 Rivers, where it reached its final limit at latitude 51 N. It also 

 occurred along the seacoast northward to within two days' journey of 

 Alexandrovsk. 



Radde (1862, p. 285) extended the range west to the Yablonoi 

 Mountains. In the Khingan Mountains a single hunter in 1856 

 secured 60 animals. The species was everywhere rather common 

 in the Bureya Mountains, where the average annual kill for a good 

 hunter was 7 to 8 animals. 



Sowerby (1923, pp. 103, 105) writes of this deer: 



In Manchuria the wapiti is to be found wherever there are forests, though 

 it is comparatively rare in those parts that are being invaded by settlers. It is 

 nowhere plentiful except in the most inaccessible parts of the Kirin forest, 

 in the upper and middle basin of the Ussuri, and in the central and western 

 parts of Heilungkiang. . . . 



The Manchurian wapiti, by reason of much persecution, has become very 

 timid and difficult to approach. The natives hunt it with the gun, but more 

 often they dig pitfalls in the paths that the animal frequents. Deer-farming 

 has become a very profitable industry, and a live deer is worth much more 

 than a dead one. . . . The value of a deer lies in its horns, which when in the 

 velvet fetch anything from 10 to 30 per pair at the apothecary's emporium. 

 It has been found that the horns in the velvet may be cut from the living 

 animal without injury to it, or endangering the growth of the following year. 

 Thus a stag which costs but little to feed brings in an annual sum that is a 

 small fortune to the poor settler that owns it. It is on this account that the 

 Chinese prefer to trap the deer alive. 



In writing on the Wild Dogs (Cuon alpinus) of the Manchurian 

 region, Sowerby says (1923, p. 46) : "The lordly wapiti stag . . . 

 cannot escape these relentless hunters, unless he can succeed in 

 placing some wide and swift river between himself and them." 



"The Manchurian wapiti is rapidly being exterminated by Chinese 

 and Russian hunters for the sake of its horns .... The female 

 is hunted for the sake of the foetal young, which is also considered 

 of high medicinal value. Formerly this large and handsome deer 

 was very plentiful in the forested areas of Manchuria, the Amur, 

 Transbaicalia, the Ussuri, the Primorsk and Northern Korea. 

 To-day it is greatly reduced in numbers, and has actually been 

 exterminated in many areas." (Sowerby, 1937, p. 250.) 



G. M. Allen (1930, p. 16) refers to this subspecies a specimen from 

 60 miles northeast of Urga, Mongolia. 



"The Manchurian Wapiti ... is in some danger of extermina- 

 tion, due to the fact that the antlers in the velvet bring a good price 

 in China, and also tails of the animal are in great demand. I saw 

 one hunter with a collection of ten or twelve tails. These practices 

 are strongly disapproved of by the government and are against the 



