HIPPOPOTAMUSES, PIGS, AND DEER 319 



Bedford's deer the bez tine is poorly developed, and the antlers 

 are of simple construction and with a " cup " at the extremity. 



Professor ScharfF, of Dublin, is of opinion that the earliest of 

 the several types into which the True Red Deer are divided is the 

 present North African race (Cervus elaphus barbarus). This stag 

 is distinguished from the other types of red deer by the rudi- 

 mentary character or the absence of the bez, or second tine, of the 

 antler. Its colour, like that of the Corsican deer, is scarcely to 

 be described as red. It is more a dark brown, with a tendency 

 to gray on the back, and with a retention of the white spots of 

 the young on the flanks and hind quarters in some individuals. 

 This earliest form of the red deer seems to have travelled due 

 westwards from Asia Minor across the Mediterranean Basin, its 

 journey, no doubt, taking place at a time when the distribution of 

 land and water in the Mediterranean was very different from 

 what it is now. Much of Italy was under water, and the Greek 

 islands were the mountain peaks of a broad land which, with 

 Greece, stretched across to Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa. 

 The small red deer (as this race may be called) still exist in 

 Corsica and Sardinia, and in the Regency of Tunis and part of 

 Algeria. They are probably extinct in Morocco, but seem to 

 have inhabited that country at one time. The Spanish race of 

 red deer, though it is really " red " in coloration, in some respects 

 seems to be akin to the North African race. In the Car- 

 pathians, the Crimea, and the Caucasus, in parts of Asia Minor 

 and Northern Persia, there is a red deer of the " maral " type, 

 which, though belonging to the species elaphus, shows some 

 affinity to the wapiti. This form connects the red deer with the 

 great wapiti stock of Northern Asia and North America. It is 

 excusable to mention the maral here, because this creature appears 

 to have once inhabited Britain, where it preceded the typical red 

 deer. The remains of its horns in English caverns by their 

 massive character were thought by the late Sir Richard Owen to 

 have belonged to a distinct genus of deer, to which he gave 

 the name of Strongyloceros. But German naturalists and Mr. 

 Lydekker have together shown, perhaps conclusively, that these 



