130 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



Mexican Deer, (Cervus Mexicanus.) This species not 

 as yet figured, was first noticed by Mr. Pennant, who re- 

 presented the horns, {Hist, of Quadrup. p. i. xx., fig. i.) 

 from a pair in the Museum of the Royal Society and now in 

 the British, to which the ticket of Mexican was attached. 

 With this information he inferred it to belong to Hernan- 

 des's Teutla Magame, and Dr. Shaw says " that it is about 

 the size of a common roebuck, and of a reddish colour, but 

 when young is often spotted with white ; the horns are 

 thick, strong and rugged, they bend forwards and are about 

 ten inches long, and trifurcated on the upper part, but 

 they sometimes vary in the number of branches or pro- 

 cesses ; the head is large, the eyes large and bright, and 

 the neck thick." That author next describes what he sup- 

 poses a variety, from a pair of horns, styled by Grew, horns 

 of the Indian Roebuck ; this is probably the pair still in the 

 British Museum, of which the following is a description : 

 they are of a bright yellow colour, so irregularly and widely 

 palmated as to cause a suspicion, that they once belonged 

 to an unknown species of Rein-deer, or to a second species of 

 Elk ; they are nearly seventeen inches long, spreading dia- 

 gonally from the head and reclining back; there is no burr at 

 the base, only a broad, ascending, tuberculated, and toothed 

 beam. At two inches from the base an antler issues from 

 the anterior part in a vertical direction, flat and ending in 

 two points: about three inches higher the beam, being 

 somewhat prismatic in form, widens, and a broad flat 

 branch throws up four snags in the form of a palm, the 

 foremost plain, the next toothed, the third plain, and the 

 fourth bifurcated : behind these a fifth assumes a still more 

 singular form, it ascends in the same direction with the 

 others, terminating in three processes, and from its external 

 posterior side throws out an horizontal branch which bi- 

 furcates again, the inferior being the longest and hanging 

 downwards, this is the right horn ; the left, after the basal 



