CHAP. L] 



ELK. 



157 



in the recollection of the old man, as one of the memo- 

 rials of his long captivity, is the small "musk deer" 1 

 so called in India, although neither sex is provided with 

 a musk-bag ; and the Europeans in Ceylon know it by 

 the name of the moose deer. Its extreme length never 

 reaches two feet ; and of those which were domesticated 

 about my house, few exceeded ten inches in height, 

 their graceful limbs being of proportionate delicacy. 

 It possesses ictog and extremely large tusks, with which 

 it can inflict a severe bite. The interpreter moodliar 

 of Negombo had a milk white meminna in 1847, which 

 he designed to send home as an acceptable present to 

 Her Majesty, but it was unfortunately killed by an 

 accident. 2 



Ceylon Elk. In the mountains, the Ceylon elk 3 , 

 which reminds one of the red deer of Scotland, attains 

 the height of four or five feet ; it abounds in all 

 shady places that are intersected by rivers ; where, 

 though its chase affords an endless resource to the 

 sportsman, its venison scarcely equals in quality the 

 inferior beef of the lowland ox. In the glades and 

 park-like openings that diversify the great forests of the 

 interior, the spotted Axis troops in herds as numerous 

 as the fallow deer in England ; and, in journeys through 

 the jungle, when often dependent on the guns of our 

 party for the precarious supply of the table, we found 

 the flesh of the Axis 4 and the Muntjac 5 a sorry substi- 

 tute for that of the pea-fowl, the jungle-cock, and 

 flamingo." The occurrence of albinos is very frequent 



the elk, frequently effect their ap- 

 proaches hy so imitating the call of 

 the animal as to induce them to re- 

 spond. _ An instance occurred during 

 my residence in Ceylon, in which two 

 natives, whose mimicry had mutually 

 deceived them, crept so close toge- 

 ther in the jungle that one shot the 

 other, supposing the cry to proceed 

 from the game. 



8 Axis maculata, H. Smith. 



4 Stylocerue muntjac, Horsf. 



1 Moschus meminna. 



2 When the English took possession 

 of Kandv, in 1803, they found " five 

 beautiful milk-white deer in the 

 palace, which was noted as a very 

 extraordinary thing." Letter in. Ap- 

 pendix to PERCIVAL'S Ceylon, p. 428. 

 The writer does not say of what 

 species they were. 



3 Rusa Aristotelis. Dr. GRAY has 

 lately shown that this is the great 

 em's of Cinder. Oss. Foss. 502, t. 39, 

 f. 10. The Singhalese, on following 



