202 THE WAPITI OF KANSU 



life. As it is, he may survive for a few remaining 

 years. 



A good pair of horns in the velvet, if large, 

 thick, and of good quality, are worth, as I have 

 said, fifty or sixty taels to the man who shoots the 

 beast. George's old hunter said the largest stag 

 he had ever killed carried horns weighing seven- 

 teen double catties (about 43 lb.), with seven 

 points on each horn. He sold it for sixty taels. 

 This was many years before we met him, and I 

 heard of no such head having been killed re- 

 cently. The hunters sell their heads to dealers, 

 who resell them for from seventy to eighty taels. 



Of the numbers killed annually some idea may 

 be gained from the fact that Dr. Smith tells me 

 that while crossing the Kialing River, he saw on 

 the ferry-boat a string of about fifteen mules loaded 

 entirely with wapiti horns. They were bound 

 from Sining to Hanchung-fu. The horns were in 

 the dry state and were intended for eye-medicine. 

 An average mule-load is between 300 lb. and 400 lb. 

 Taking the horns at 20 lb. per pair, it gives fifteen 

 to twenty pairs per mule. This gives between 250 

 and 300 pairs of horns in one string, though doubt- 

 less many were ' shed.' It is possible, of course, 

 that some of these came from Central Asia, but 

 it in any case gives some sort of a basis on which 

 to make a calculation, 



This mule-train, of course, only represented male 

 deer, but a very large number of females and 

 young are also killed annually. In addition to 

 human hunters, a persistent enemy of the wapiti is 

 a species of wild dog called tsaikou. Smaller in 

 size than a wolf, but deadly foes to deer, they 



