384 



UNGULATES. 



SKULL OF THE CHINESE WATER-DEER WITH PART OF THE UPPER JAW CUT 



away to show the base OF the tusk. (From Sir V. Brooke, 

 Proc. Zool. Soc, 1S72.) 



deer is the Chinese water-deer (Hydropotes inermis), which in both these features 

 resembles the musk-deer, although in other respects it is allied to the more typical 



representatives of the pre- 

 sent section of the family. 



The Chinese water-deer 

 is of the approximate 

 dimensions of the Indian 

 muntjac (p. 366) ; and is a 

 long - bodied and short- 

 limbed creature, with light 

 reddish-brown fur. One of 

 the most remarkable peculi- 

 arities about this small deer 

 is that the does produce from 

 three to six fawns at a birth. 

 The pelage of the young is faintly marked with white spots, arranged in ill-defined 

 rows. The number of young produced, coupled with the absence of antlers in the 

 bucks, indicates that the Chinese water-deer is in all probability a survivor from 

 a very ancient type of the Deer family. These deer are commonly found on the 

 Yang-tse-Kiang, in parties of two or three. When disturbed, they arch their backs 

 and scud away at a great pace in a series of quick leaps. They are usually killed 

 with buckshot. 



The resemblance of the skull of the male water-deer to that of the musk-deer, 

 is merely due to both forms being apparently direct descendants of the common 

 ancestral type, from which the more specialised members of the family have 

 been evolved : it being well ascertained that in most or all of the early Tertiary 

 deer the males were devoid of antlers and furnished with long upper tusks. 

 When antlers were developed to their full extent, so as to become efficient weapons 

 of defence, the need for tusks disappeared, and the tusks consequently dwindled 

 or were lost. The muntjacs, in which the antlers are short, present a kind of 

 middle stage of evolution, the tusks having become much smaller than in the 

 Chinese water-deer, though larger than in many species of superior size. 



The American Deer. 



Genus Cariacus. 



With the exception of the wapiti, the reindeer, and the elk, which are either closely 

 allied to, or identical with, Old World types, the whole of the deer of America differ 

 essentiallj' from those of Asia and Europe, and are referred (with the exception of one 

 small species which forms a genus by itself) to a totally distinct genus, Cariacus. 



These deer resemble the reindeer in the structure of the bones of the lower 

 part of the fore-limb ; and also in that in the dry skull the aperture of the nasal 

 passage is completely divided by a longitudinal vertical partition of bone. The 

 latter feature is, indeed, peculiar to the reindeer and the American deer, and serves 

 at once to distinguish their skulls from those of any species of the genus Cervus. 



