ORDER ARTIODACTYLA : EVEN-TOED UNGULATES 461 



Height of adult male at shoulder, 137 cm.; length of antlers, 115 

 cm. (Engelmann, 1938, pp. 31, 33). 



The two original female specimens secured by Capt. Malcolm 

 McNeill, and the set of antlers described as Cervua canadensis wardi, 

 remained for years as the only available specimens of this deer. 



"Under its native name of Peh Lu-tsze I have heard this animal 

 spoken of as far north as Sungpan, and very likely it ranges through- 

 out the whole Chino-Thibetan borderland" (Wilson, 1913, p. 164) . 



R. C. Andrews writes (1919, pp. 175-176) concerning the region 

 between Taku ferry and Chung-tien, northwestern Yunnan: "We 

 made arrangements to go with a number of the Lolos to a spot 

 fifteen miles away on the Chung-tien road to hunt wapiti (probably 

 Cervus macneilli) which the natives call maloo. . . . 



"At present these deer are abundant in but few places. . . . The 

 growing horns . . . are considered of great medicinal value and, 

 during the summer, the animals are trapped and hunted relentlessly 

 by the natives. In Yiin-nan, when we were there, a pair of horns were 

 worth $100 (Mexican)." 



According to Sowerby (1937, p. 250), "This deer replaces the 

 foregoing [C. e. kansuensis] in eastern Tibet, Sikong and West 

 Szechuan. It does not appear to be very plentiful .... It is 

 probably on the way to extinction." 



Brooke Dolan, II (MS., 1938; cf. also Dolan in G. M. Allen, 

 1939a, p. 285) contributes the following: "McNeill's deer occurs 

 in the marginal forests of the Mekong, Yangtze and Yalung ranges, 

 usually above 11,000 ft., in heavy growth of dwarf rhododendron. 

 First collected near Litang by Captain McNeill, they are now very 

 scarce in that locality, and we saw no evidences of them except 

 antlers and velvet shown to us by merchants in Litang and said to 

 have been killed in the vicinity, although they might very well have 

 come from far away. We collected them in March of 1935, two days 

 to the west of Jyekundo. . . . Schafer later collected them in the 

 Mekong drainage southwest of Jyekundo, and in September found 

 them most plentiful near the monastery of Dzogchen, not far from 

 Derge in the Yalung watershed. . . . These deer have been much 

 persecuted by the natives for the aphrodisiac properties believed 

 by the Chinese to be inherent in antler velvet, and probably they 

 were once plentiful over most of eastern Tibet. They are now pro- 

 tected by the monastery at Dzogchen, and we heard in Jyekundo 

 that native chieftains protected them to the west of Jyekundo." 

 Mr. Dolan adds that he very roughly estimates the total numbers 

 of the animal at possibly 5,000. 



