278 MOSTLY MAMMALS 



lived in an enclosed park without, apparently, any infusion 

 of fresh blood. It would, therefore, seem probable that it 

 will be less likely to suffer from the effects of inbreeding 

 than is the case with animals suddenly transferred from 

 the wild state to captivity. Every care is, of course, 

 taken of these valuable animals, and naturalists will watch 

 with interest the results of the attempt to renew and 

 preserve a decadent and almost exterminated race. 



So far as I am aware, Pere David's mi-lou deer is 

 the only example of a mammalian species used neither as 

 a food-supply nor as a beast of burden which has been 

 preserved from extermination in a semi-domesticated state. 



Readers of this article who may be desirous of seeing 

 the mi-lou deer, will find a handsome stag, with fully 

 developed antlers, exhibited in the Natural History branch 

 of the British Museum, where there is also the mounted 

 head of a female — both the gift of the Duke and Duchess 

 of Bedford. Unfortunately, the taxidermist to whom the 

 task of mounting the • stag was confided (and taxidermists 

 are the despair of naturalists, whose name they are prone 

 to appropriate !) took for his model a red-deer instead of 

 photographs like the one here reproduced. Consequently, 

 instead of having the slouching, donkey-like carriage so 

 essentially characteristic of the species, the Museum 

 specimen is represented with its head elevated, after the 

 fashion of Landseer's picture, "The Monarch of the Glen." 



As already mentioned, the mi-lou deer, which is the 

 sole representative of its kind, has no near relatives in 

 the Old World. In spite of a certain not very important 

 difference in the structure of the bones of the fore-foot, it 

 appears, however, to be a not very distant cousin of the 

 typical American deer — that is to say, the numerous species 

 other than the elk, the wapiti, and the reindeer, which 



