DEER. 



393 



Mule-Deer. 



feet high, and the head of a mounted man is only just visible above the tops. 

 Several huntsmen armed with shot-guns form a line on the leeward side of the 

 space to be hunted over, and ride through it, a little more than a gun-shot apart. 

 The deer that lie in their course are started from the grass, and bound off ahead of 

 the hunters, every now and then showing their backs above the tops of the grass. 

 The horsemen have to shoot from the saddle, and very quickly, to secure their 

 game." Sometimes these deer are shot from canoes as they swim from island 

 to island. 

 Naked-Eared The naked-eared deer (C. gymnotis) from Colombia and Ecuador 



Deer. appears to be a distinct species, distinguished from the Virginian deer 

 by the large flapping ears, of which the outer surface is naked, by the extreme 

 narrowness of the head, and the more slender form. 



The most specialised of all the American deer as regards size and 

 complexity of antlers is the mule-deer (G. macrotis), so called on 

 account of the enormous size of its ears. In this deer the antlers (as shown in a 

 front view in the accompanying 

 figure, and in profile in the figure 

 on p. 385), when compared with 

 those of the Virginian deer, have 

 recovered the relative importance 

 of the posterior prong, concomit- 

 antly with a proportionate re- 

 duction of the subbasal snag, and 

 are therefore much more regularly 

 forked " At the same time," 

 writes Mr. A. G. Cameron, "the 

 main strength of the beam is 

 drawn into the anterior prong, 

 and intermediate forms occur both 

 in this and the last-named species, 

 which bridge the gap between the 

 extremes on either side, and leave 

 no doubt as to their intimate 

 relationship." In general the 

 front prong is simply forked, 

 while the second divides into three 

 or more snags in adult bucks ; but 

 instances occur where the hinder 

 prong is unbranched, while in 



some individuals of the Virginian deer the same prong is divided. The antlers 

 of the second year are simply forked, in the third year the hinder prong is also 

 forked ; but the forking of the front prong and the development of the subbasal 

 snag does not take place till tin- assumption of the fourth set of antlers. In the left 

 antler represented in the figure on p. 385, which is from a head in the collection 

 of Mr. A. G. Cameron, the length of the upper prong is 28, and that of the lower 

 prong 29 inches along the curve, the basal girth being 5| inches; but in the 



HEAD OF MULE-DEER. 



