534 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. V1I1. 
name “ Para.” One at least (if not more) of the last generation of 
Bombay sportsmen had contracted the habit of calling our present 
beast a “* hog-deer,”’ and so it spread to the early gazetteer lists. The 
writers, turning up the name in Jerdon and identifying by name 
and not by nature, added the Latin name he gives, viz., Ais porcinus, 
and so the thing got into print. 
On the mere merits, Cervus porcenus has less right to its not very 
elegant trivial name than our beast. For there is nothing hoggish 
about it, except a certain failure in the beauty of colour and form, 
and poetry of motion, that distinguish its nearest ally, the spotted deer. 
Now the mouse-deer has several very porcine points about him. 
He is hornless ; he has (the male) tusks in the upper jaw, and his feet 
are “pettitoes,” like a pig’s ; whereas those of Cervus porcinus are, 
like those of all the horned ruminants, “‘cloots.”’ 
The difference is not very obvious at a glance ; and although many 
of us have anatomised cow-heel and pettitoes, it has seldom been with 
scientific intent. Opportunities of dissecting the foot of Tragulus 
are not common, though we have a specimen in spirit in our collec- 
tion. But if any one will take any text-book of natural history, or 
Mr. Blanford’s own book (page 480), he will see the difference between 
a pig’s foot and a deer’s plainly illustrated. ‘The figure and action of 
Tragulus memimna are clumsy and ungraceful, and it squats on the 
ground in a pig-like way. But it is not very much observed. Itisa 
small animal, seldom exceeding two feet long or half a stone in 
weight; the colour is olive-gray, almost green ; whitish below, and 
along the sides it has the marks which naturalists call “ menillings ”’; 
longitudinal rows of long whitish spots. These are almost continuous 
stripes in young animals, but the chain gets broken up as they grow 
older ; the oldest males seem to get almost reddish, especially about the 
head, as may be seen by our fine mounted head on the table. It 
haunts the thickest forests, and even holes in rocks, so that beaters, 
without dogs, go over or past it. European sportsmen in such 
places are apt to be reserving their fire for something better, and if 
they espy it at all, or hear it move in the thicket, take it for a hare. 
Natives, hunting with dogs, know a good deal more about it, and 
know it well throughout the Ghats and the Konkan. The Maratha 
name is “ Pisarwa,.” The female usually produces twins in the early 
cold weather after a gestation of four or five months. It may be 
presumed that the males fight with their tusks. The natives say that 
it is well to handle a netted male carefully ; and this is likely. 
