THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
area is increased, or is made more showy by a ‘‘cocking” of the tail dis- 
playing its white under side, as do rabbits, hares, goats, and conspicuously 
Signifi- our Virginia deer; or by the erection and expansion of the 
White of hairs on the patch, which are longer than elsewhere in such 
Stern. animals. This last arrangement is characteristic of the roe, 
the sika deer, and of our prongbuck. Ernest Thompson Seton has described 
it picturesquely as a ‘tgreat double disk or chrysanthemum of white that 
shines afar like a patch of snow’’; but he gives it an exaggerated importance. 
ui’ Lits Ve 
PRONGHORN BUCKS AND DOES. 
In summer the hair of the pronghorn is smooth and flexible, but as 
winter approaches it lengthens; each hair becomes thick, its interior be- 
comes white and spongy, it loses its flexibility, and at last becomes brittle, 
so that its point is easily rubbed off. This deerlike coat forms a close and 
warm covering for the animal, but renders the skin useless as fur, nor does 
it make serviceable leather. The flesh, however, is delicious. 
The life of our antelope is very simple. It is the genius of 
the dry, gravelly, bunch-grass plains, where it finds in the sun- 
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