572 MR. R. SWINHOE ON CHINESE DEER. [June 17, 



teresting discovery, which adds a new and remarkahle form to the 

 family of the Papilionidse. 



Other specimens have since been taken at Buxa by Lieut. H. M. 

 Rose, of the Bengal Stan Corps. 



5. On Chinese Deer, with the Description of an apparently 

 new Species. By Robert Swinhoe, F.Z.S., H.B.M. 

 Consul at Chefoo. 



[Received June 4, 1873.] 



During my two months' residence in Shanghai I have been pay- 

 ing particular attention to Deer ; and I now hasten to communicate 

 to you my notes, to be read before the Society, while they are still 

 fresh in my mind and not obliterated by the confusion of packing 

 and moving to my next post at Chefoo, the north-eastern point of 

 the province of Shantung. Hydropotes inermis has been extremely 

 abundant this winter, ranging within a few scores of miles of 

 Shanghai ; and shooting-parties have brought back as many as 

 thirty at a time. The market, the whole season through, has 

 been perfectly glutted with them ; and numbers rot for want of con- 

 sumers. Four and sixpence each was the price they fell to. They 

 hide in marshy ground, and are usually started singly ; but a gentle- 

 man here tells me that he put up a herd of twenty on one occasion, 

 in the great marsh beyond the Hangchow-Bay sea-wall, near Fung 

 Hien city, the ground whence the Shanghai market gets most of its 

 supply of wild game. Another sporting friend confirmed the nu- 

 merous progeny at a birth, and said that twice this winter he had 

 found seven young ones in females that had been opened. I had 

 some females opened in the market ; but they were childless. An 

 embryo procured at Chinkiang was placed in spirits and given to 

 me ; and I have lately forwarded it to the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons. In the adult male carcasses that I have ex- 

 amined I have always found the canines loose, moving readily 

 backwards and forwards and from side to side. The undeveloped 

 canines were, on the contrary, firmly fixed ; they had also the 

 appearance of having been whetted to an edge on their inner line. 

 I never had the opportunity of watching a live adult male, but, from 

 the fact of these teeth being loose, imagine it possible that the 

 animal might have muscular power over them. This I communi- 

 cated to Prof. Busk, enclosing the fully developed tusks of a specimen 

 known to have been three years old when it died. Prof. Busk 

 scouted the idea of muscularity ; and I determined to have the point 

 settled here. To this end I asked the assistance of two of the lead- 

 ing surgeons at Shanghai. I sent a fresh adult skull to Dr. L. H. 

 Little, and took two to the study of Dr. R. A. Jamieson, who had 

 kindly agreed to dissect and examine them in my company. He 

 cut open the socket and took out the tooth. The tissue round the 



