1910.] ON A WAPITI AND A MUNTJAC. 987 



2. On a Wapiti and a Muntjac. 

 By R. Lydekker *. 



[Received May 4, 1910.] 



(Text-figures 143 & 144.) 



The Wapiti [Cervus canadensis ivardi, subsp. n.). 



A few weeks ago the Rev. W. IST. Fergusson, a missionary in 

 Sze-chuen, returned from China, bringing with liim a small 

 collection of Mammals from that province and Tibet, among 

 them being a skin of jEluropus and a pair of antlers of the 

 Sze-chuen Sambar (Cerinis U7dcolor dejeani). The collection also 

 included two shed antlers of an adult Wapiti (text-fig. 143), which 

 may or may not be a real pair, althongh from the fact that 

 neither is quite synnnetrical in foi-m and size with its fellow, 

 while one is redder than the other, there seems considerable 

 probability that the two are not naturally associated. These 

 antlers, I was informed at the outset, came from Tibet, and, 

 owing to the fact that Wapiti and other antlers (although 

 generally, if not invariably, in the velvet) constitute an im- 

 portant article of export from the Altai and elsewhere to China, 

 I was naturally suspicious — especially as Wapiti have been 

 hitherto unknown to exist on the southern side of the Gobi — 

 that Mr. Fergusson's specimens might have been imported into 

 Tibet. 



Enquiries were accordingly made from their owner as to the 

 history of the specimens, to which Mr. Fergusson replied as 

 follows : — 



" As you are no doubt aware, the native haunts of the Parti- 

 coloured Bear {^Eluropus) are in the dwarf bamboo and rhodo- 

 dendron forests so abundant in Sze-chuen at an elevation of from 

 9000 to 11,000 ieet above sea-level. The Deer you identify as 

 Wapiti inhabit the region just above the tree-line ; I have never 

 shot one myself in these regions, yet I have it on good authority 

 that they have been obtained. The specimen sent to you I 

 obtained from a native hunter within fifty miles of the place 

 where the Parti-coloured Bear was shot. The Deer, of course, 

 never enter the bamboo-thickets in which the Bear makes its 

 home, but graze on the grassy plains beyond." 



Although the Deer referred to by Mr. Fergusson may have 

 been the so-called White Deer or Sze-chuen Hangul described 

 by myself in the Society's 'Proceedings' for 1909 (p. 588) as 

 Cervits cashmirkinus maciieiUif, the late Mr. J. W. Brooke 

 referred to another and apparently larger Deer as inhabiting the 

 Sze-chuen frontier, and there accoi'dingly seems to be a proba- 

 bility that the story told by the native hunter to Mr, Fergusson 



* Published bj' permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, 

 f Since this paper was Mn-itten, Major McNeill has informed me that the specimen 

 was shot on the Tibetan side of the border. 



