294 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



deer includes chiefly low brushy islands and tidelands, below 

 the 100-foot contour; above this the hills rise sharply from the 

 river valley and the whitetails give place to the black-tailed 

 deer. In the State of Washington the area inhabited by the 

 former includes chiefly Skamokawa, Elokomin, and Cathlamet 

 Islands, Puget Island, Tenasillahe Island, and Price Island, a 

 total area of over 12,000 acres, with an estimated whitetail- 

 deer population of between 400 and 500. On the Oregon side 

 of the river's mouth the area inhabited is slightly greater 

 (nearly 14,800 acres), but the deer population is less than half 

 that in Washington, since the bulk of it is confined to the less 

 cleared Webb and Westland districts. "As far as the main- 

 land is concerned, the four corners of the range are fixed by 

 steep bluffs that rise from the water's edge on both the Oregon 

 and Washington shores." With practically no competition 

 from blacktail deer, and with nearly complete freedom from 

 large predatory mammals, the danger to this group seems small. 

 Nevertheless in some of the islands as on Puget Island, the 

 deer "have increased to the point where their depredations 

 were distinctly annoying to the farmers." A few are annually 

 killed in spite of legal protection, but with the gradual clearing 

 and settlement of their restricted range, this remnant, Scheffer 

 believes, will be in danger of extermination. "The obvious 

 solution," he writes, "is to move one or more breeding stocks 

 of the deer to nonagricultural areas," if suitable ones can be 

 found, or to make a sanctuary of some tideland area already 

 occupied by them and as yet only slightly devoted to farming, 

 as on Skamokawa Island. This deer is well known to the 

 farmers and fishermen of this region as "tideland deer" or 

 "cottontail deer." 



SONORA DEER; FANTAIL 

 ODOCOILEUS COTJESI (Coues and Yarrow) 



Cariacus virginianus var. couesi Coues and Yarrow, Rept. Geogr. and Geol. Explor. 



and Surv. west of 100th Meridian (Wheeler), vol. 5, p. 72, 1875 (Camp Crittenden, 



Pima County, Arizona). 

 FIG.: Nelson, 1916, p. 458, lower fig. (colored). 



Though possibly to be considered a race of the Virginia deer, 

 Bailey (1931) believes the Sonora deer are best regarded as a 

 distinct though closely allied species. About half the size 

 and weight of a Virginia deer, they are extremely pale in color, 



