56 HOOFED ANIMALS 



The female Caribou is the only female deer with antlers. 



The best deer to keep in captivity in a park is the Fallow 

 Deer, of Europe; and outside of its own home the worst is 

 the Columbian Black-Tail. 



Except as already stated, nearly every country in the 

 world is provided with representatives of the Deer Family, 

 according to conditions. Nature has fitted the caribou to 

 live in the awful lands of desolation in the Far North, and the 

 moose in the forests fringing the Arctic barrens. The elk 

 is fashioned for the plains, the foot-hills and open-timbered 

 mountains of western America and central Asia. The white- 

 tailed deer skulks in safety through the thickest forests of 

 temperate North America, and in India and the Far East 

 the axis deer, the sambar and the tiny muntjac, with only 

 one or two tines on each antler, have been formed to slip 

 through the tangled jungles with ease and safety. 



North America has the good fortune to be rich in Cervidae. 

 It has six prominent types, and at this date (1914) a full 

 count reveals twenty-four recognized species and subspecies, 

 which form a group combining the grand, the beautiful and 

 the picturesque, and of very decided value to man. In the 

 exploration and settlement of the United States and in the 

 exploration of Alaska and the Far North, the wild herds have 

 played an important part. 



The unvarying distinctive mark by which any American 

 representative of the Deer Family can be recognized is the 

 presence on the male of solid horns of bone, called antlers, which 

 are shed once a year, close down to the skull, and are fully 

 renewed by rapidly growing out in a soft state called "the velvet." 



