SOME SMALL DEER 
four species of chestnut-red deer, twenty to twenty-two inches 
high, creeping about the Oriental jungles, and wearing roughened, 
once-forked antlers, mounted upon very tall pedicels. It is not 
upon their tiny horns, but upon dagger play with their tusks, 
that all these kinds of diminutive deer rely for protection against 
wolves and wildcats. Although the Indian muntjac (“kakar” 
or barking deer) is numerous wherever wooded hills abound, and 
its loud, resonant, continuous barking often 
resounds morning and evening close to set- 
tlements, it is rarely scen, for it does not 
feed openly by daylight, nor gather into 
migratory herds. The muntjacs come 
nearest of existing deer to the early family 
type shown in fossils; and their closest liv- 
ing relatives are the roe deer * of Europe, 
which are a little bigger, and have some- 
what more complicated antlers, but resemble them in habits as 
closely as the different circumstances permit. The roe is still 
found wild in Scotland and in many parts of Europe, — in fact, 
thousands come to market annually from the region east of the 
Alps; and it furnishes one of the principal game animals of 
that continent.”7 
The typical deer constitute the genus Cervus, and as a rule 
are of large size and display widely branching antlers. The 
smallest one is the diminutive hog deer or para, ex- Hog Deer 
ceedingly common on the low, wet plains of north- and Swamp 
ern India and Burma,’ where it lurks alone in the 
grass and thickets, and looks and acts like a pig. Kinloch 
mentions that they are often chased on horseback and speared 
by boar hunters. ‘I have heard,” he writes, ‘‘of their deliber- 
ately charging a horse; and with their sharp horns they can 
inflict a very severe wound.” Next them stands the group of 
Asiatic, semitropical swamp deer, one of which, the bara- 
singha, is prominent among the game of India. Siam has 
X 305 
A ROEBUCK. 
