276 MOSTLY. MAMMALS 
Non Hai-tzu, or even in the specimens first brought to 
Europe. 
The date of the introduction of these deer into the 
imperial hunting-park is probably very remote, seeing 
that, as already said, they have never been found wild in 
any part of Asia by Europeans. It is true that, according 
to Dr. S. W. Bushell, to whose account reference is again 
made in the sequel, a Chinese writer of the latter part of 
the eighteenth century mentions Kashgaria as the native 
country of these deer; but even if that be correct, the 
species may have been exterminated there centuries ago. 
Anyway, there is but little hope of its survival in that 
district at the present day. 
As China became slowly opened up to European 
enterprise, the difficulty of obtaining specimens of the 
mi-lou deer gradually decreased, and in August, 1869, a 
male and female were received at the menagerie of the 
Zoological Society as a gift from Sir Rutherford Alcock. 
A second pair were acquired by purchase in 1883, since 
the death of which the species appears to have been 
unrepresented in the Society's collection. | Meanwhile 
specimens were from time to time received by various 
menageries on the Continent; and the species has bred at 
the gardens of the Société d’Acclimatation at Paris and 
elsewhere. 
The subsequent history of this interesting and remark- 
able species is extremely sad, no one apparently having 
had the least idea that it was on the point of extermina- 
tion until too late. No definite statements are made by 
the earlier travellers as to the numbers of these deer in 
the Non Hai-tzu when they first came under the observa- 
tion of Europeans. Writing, however, in the summer of 
1898 to the Secretary of the Zoological Society, Dr. Bushell 
