NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 289 



This is the race of the semiarid part of southern and middle 

 Texas, but the exact limits of its range remain to be defined. 

 It is said to be of small size, with relatively short legs, small 

 ears, and with small and strongly incurved antlers. The molar 

 and premolar teeth are relatively very large, the colors pale. 

 Total length, 1,585 mm. Weight of bucks up to 100 pounds^ 

 females 75 pounds (Mearns, 1907). 



The range of this race extends into Mexico from southern 

 Texas at least as far as San Luis Potosi. Mearns (1907) 

 wrote of it that in the early years of this century it was abun- 

 dant in the bottomlands and low mountain ranges of southern 

 Texas, notwithstanding the fact that the Seminoles kill num- 

 bers of them every year. He had seen them in great bands in 

 Devils River Valley. Bailey (1905) says that "on many of the 

 large ranches between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, where 

 the oak and mesquite thickets are interspersed with prairie and 

 grassy openings, deer find ideal conditions, with abundant food 

 and cover. The nature of the ground is such as to protect them 

 from wolves and other natural enemies; but it is well suited to 

 either hunting on horseback or still hunting, which, if freely 

 allowed, would soon exterminate them. With protection, 

 however, they increase rapidly, and in many places are abun- 

 dant . . . On certain large ranches they are still numerous, 

 while on others they have become extremely scarce and would 

 be entirely exterminated but for the recruits from surrounding 

 and better protected ranches ... In spite of the pro- 

 tection of State laws and ranch owners there are still remote 

 sections of rough, uncontrolled range where every year hunters 

 kill wagonloads of deer for the market, or worse, kill the deer 

 for the hides only, leaving the carcasses to rot. I was told 

 that in the winter of 1901-2 hundreds of deer skins were 

 brought out of the country west of Kerrville." Bailey at- 

 tributes much of the present abundance of this deer to the en- 

 lightened attitude of the ranch owners who give it reasonable 

 protection. 



LOUISIANA DEER 



ODOCOILEUS VIRGINIANUS LOUISIANAE G. M. Allen 



Odocoelus [sic] virginianus louisianae G. M. Allen, Amer. Nat., vol. 35, p. 449, June, 



1901 (Mer Rouge, Morehouse Parish, Louisiana). 

 FIG.: Allen, 1901, fig. on p. 453 (antlered skull). 



