HIPPOPOTAMUSES, PIGS, AND DEER 307 



to the wrist joint. These side toes, however, in the typical 

 deer are also supported (and perhaps sufficient stress is not 

 laid on this fact by zoologists) by a few bony phalanges at 

 the extremities. The antlers of the typical deer invariably possess 

 (even if it has only degenerated to a rudiment) a brow tine, 

 which, rising quite close to the coronet, or commencement of the 

 antler, extends more or less horizontally over the forehead, often in 

 a line nearly parallel to the profile of the nose. As a general rule, 

 in the typical deer this front tine is never forked, the exception 

 to the rule being in the extreme types of Cervus giganteus, that 

 giant deer of Europe and Ireland. The skin round the nostrils 

 and middle of the upper lip is naked and wet. A gland on the 

 hind leg, which is a feature in so many deer besides this genus, 

 is present (concealed by a tuft of hair) on the outer edge of the 

 metatarsus — that is to say, on the lower part of the leg just 

 below the hock ; and there is no gland in the inner side of the 

 hock, such as exists in the American deer. The males of this 

 genus may or may not possess small canines in the upper jaw. 

 Occasionally these teeth make their appearance in the female as 

 weU. They have, however, lost all importance in this genus, 

 and are practically no longer functional. The females have four 

 mammas. The genus Cervus is divided by Lydekker and other 

 authorities into the following groups or sub-genera: (i) The Red 

 Deer, or Elaphine; (2) the Sikinej^or Sika Deer (found in Eastern 

 Asia, and the stock from which the Red Deer group arose) ; (3) the 

 Damine, or Fallow Deer group ; (4) the Rusine, or Axis-sambur 

 group ; and (5) the Rucervine, or Swamp Deer group. As already 

 stated, it is believed that a species of Axis Deer {Cervus suttonensis) 

 inhabited England during the early Pleistocene, and some of the 

 scarcely defined earlier species of deer in this country may possibly 

 have belonged to the Sikine ^ group ; otherwise the only two 

 groups of deer which are represented with any certainty in the 

 British fauna are the Damine (Fallow Deer) and the Elaphine 

 (Red Deer). 



1 They certainly existed in France, where one species has been classified 

 as Cervus perrieri. 



