58 GILPIN — ON THE MAMMALIA OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



falcon, and great northern owl ; and we are apt to speculate Kow 

 the deer, passing north, has had his limbs thus clothed in hair, and 

 has departed from the typical slender, satin-skinned foot of his race. 

 Yet geological facts deny the assumption ; they teach us that once 

 there was a world that produced nothing but bitter lichens and sour 

 mosses, scantily growing beneath winter suns, and upon glaciated 

 wastes, and that there came a thick-legged robust deer to browse 

 upon these mosses, with his thick coat and hairy hoofs, the first 

 type of deer the world ever saw, the companion of the U. speleus, 

 the cave bear, the extinct hyena, the rhinoceros, terchoorinus, 

 and the primordial elephants, all extinct but himself; so runs the 

 record of the geologist, carried out in his stone-flora, and by the 

 bones found in the upper tertiaries. How far the earth's surface 

 was thus covered is conjecture, perhaps near to the equator. As 

 genial suns under a better climate produced more exuberant crops, 

 this arctic species gradually retreated from the pole. In Europe, 

 he has retreated to Lapland ; in Asia, to the shores of the Arctic 

 ocean, where herds are kept by the Tungeses ; in America, a few 

 are left in Nova Scotia ; more in Newfoundland ; and the rest are 

 all driven back toward the polar circle. 



Nova Scotia, with its latitude between 43 and 44 north, is their 

 lowest southern habitat now existing, and consequently the most 

 interesting place to study them in. The following are the dimen- 

 sions of a buck killed this winter, in Digby county, by my son ; 

 they were taken upon the spot, thirty miles from the sea, marked 

 upon his waist-belt, and carefully taken off on returning home. 



Length from tip of nose to tail, 7 ft. 



Height at foreshoulder, 4 ft. 10 in. 



Girth at foreshoulder, 6 ft. 4 in. 



Girth, thickest part of neck, 3 ft. 7 in. 



Length of hind leg, from hip, 5 ft. 5 in. 



Length of fore leg, **•..... .... 2 ft. 6 in. 



Girth of hind leg, largest part, 1 ft, 2 in. 



do do smallest part, 7 in. 



Girth of fore leg, largest part, 1 ft 1 in. 



do do smallest part, 6 in. 



Tip of nose to ear, 1 ft 8^ in. 



He had no horns. 



