THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
years. The annals of East Indian sport are filled with interest- 
ing experiences in hunting this deer, which presents many a 
difficult problem to the sportsman. In northern India they are 
shot, but in Ceylon, according to Baker,“” who devotes a whole 
chapter to the mat- 
ter, the custom is to 
chase them with 
hounds, and, when 
the quarry has been 
brought to bay, usu- 
ally in a stream, to 
finish it with a 
thrust of the knife. 
The hair of the 
sambar is so coarse 
and bristly as to 
deserve almost the 
name of quills, and 
lengthens on the nape into an erectile mane. The color is 
nearly uniform dark brown, but may vary locally to amber 
and gray; and as a rule the fawns are not spotted. 
Very different in coloring, but otherwise closely related, are 
the Eastern spotted deer, — the pretty axis, or chital, and the 
“sika” group of Japan and China, of whose special 
characteristics I have already spoken. It is comical 
to watch a band of these deer in fly time,— every white tail 
whirling on its axis. 
Europe and western Asia have a spotted deer of similar size, 
but with very different horns, — the fallow deer, familiar to all 
Fallow who have strolled through English parks or visited 
sat any first-rate “zoo.” Here we come upon the “pal- 
mated” type of antler, that is, one in which the beam flattens 
out toward its extremity like the palm of the hand, the terminal 
tines sticking out like fingers. Good fallow antlers may meas- 
308 
EUROPEAN FALLOW DEER, 
Sika. 
” 
