TYPICAL DEER 299 



districts in Great Britain, but also in such parts of our Empire as 

 New Zealand, where conditions suitable to its existence occur ; but 

 few things are more remarkable than the extreme indifference of 

 humanity to the naturalisation of unimpeachably useful animals, though 

 we have distributed pests widely enough. 



There seems to be only another species of Musk-Deer known beside 

 the common one — the Kansu Musk {Moschus sifanicus), which is said 

 to have longer and darker ears. The Musk-Deer is so very different 

 from other Deer that it has even been doubted whether it does not 

 deserve a family to itself; but it is generally treated merely as an 

 outlying member of the typical Deer {Cervidcz). 



TYPICAL DEER 



These, as every one knows, usually have horns, confined — except in 

 the case of the Reindeer, and of individual "freak" does in one or 

 two other species — to the males, and shed and renewed at more or 

 less regular intervals. The growth of these horns, which are composed 

 of true bone, and have no real horn in them, is one of the most 

 wonderful things in nature. They begin as soft knobs, covered with 

 the "velvet," a skin coated with plush-like fur, and gradually assume 

 their full size and form, hardening meanwhile. Then the knotted 

 ring at the base (the "burr") forms, and the blood circulation- dies 

 away almost completely. The velvet dies and dries, and is rubbed off 

 by the stag against trees, &c, and he is as anxious to use his new 

 weapons for combat as he was previously to save his tender growing 

 antlers from contact with the boughs, &c. In Deer with the usual 

 branching horns, the young stag's first set have only one spike, and 

 the prongs increase in number yearly till the maximum is reached ; 

 but when the. stag has passed his prime, the antlers diminish in size 

 and beauty yearly as he advances in age. Deer are found everywhere 

 except in the Australian region and in Africa south of Sahara; but 

 they are not nearly so numerous or so varied a family as the hollow- 

 horned Ruminants, or even as the Antelope section of that family. 



