66 
HAMLYN'S MENAGERIE MAGAZINE. 
middle of the side of the neck, and the other below 
the withers, which are extraordinarily well- 
marked, and that on the neck shows a regular 
puncture in the centre as if from a stab with a 
stout skewer. 
Then the feet are peculiar, in being broad 
not from having particularly wide hoofs, as in 
the Reindeer, but from the wide separation of 
the toes, which,, at any rate in the fore-feet, show 
a connecting skin as in the Camel and Llama, 
so that the beast can almost be called web-footed; 
and the change of coat is unsurpassed in pecu- 
liarity by any of the deer family, and by few 
other beasts. In winter the colour is a stone- 
grey, with the fore-neck black and the legs and 
belly whitish; the coat is then close and sleek, 
and the beast looks particularly donkey-like. The 
summer coat is bright sandy-yellow, loose and 
untidy by reason of numerous long outstanding 
hairs, which remind one of a human head which 
needs the barber's attention. While in this coat 
the beast carries his horns, growing and dropping 
them in the grey dress; at least that is the case 
with the Zoo specimen. 
The dark shade on the throat and the light- 
ening on the underparts are not so noticeable in 
the yellow as in the grey coat, but in both a 
strong black stripe along the withers is a striking 
feature, emphasised in the grey dress by a bor- 
dering of a few large light spots. 
Some individuals of this species, like the 
Zoo animal, grow two sets of antlers in a year 
— a unique feature in the deer tribe. The Zoo 
animal is a quiet sluggish beast, and not so 
savage as most of the large deer when bearing 
horns, but the usual roll of the eye shows that 
it is spirit, not the will to do harm, that is, want- 
ing in him. 
The history of this species of deer is with- 
out a parallel in the world of beasts. Many years 
ago, the great French missionary, Pere David, 
who, like so many clerics, was one of the best 
of naturalists — far better than most of the scien- 
tifically-trained sort — saw, over the wall of the 
Chinese Emperor's hunting-park at Pekin, some 
animals which he thought were a new kind of 
Reindeer. He was soon able to send specimens 
to Paris, where it was found that, though not 
specially allied to Reindeer, the animals were 
certainly new, and as I have said above, of a 
very peculiar type. 
The remarkable point about their history is, 
however, that none have ever been found outside 
the old hunting-park. No doubt some Emperor 
with a taste for live curiosities — a very common 
hobby among monarchs, especially in the East — 
had procured the original stock on account! of 
their rarity and peculiar appearance, and thus 
preserved them; for there seems every reason to 
suppose that the race is completely extinct in a 
wild state. In its slow movements, tame spirit, 
and the very poor adaptation of its peculiar ant- 
lers for defence or attack, this deer must have 
had but a poor time in competition with the fierce, 
alert, well-armed stags of other species, to say 
nothing of wolves and other carnivorous foes. 
Its native haunts would appear to be in marshy 
places, as those at large in the Duke of Bed- 
ford's park at Woburn 'have been observed to 
take to the water in summer a great deal, in 
this respect, as in form resembling the Reindeer 
— at any rate the American race known as Cari- 
bou. Lydekker, who gives us this information 
in one of his books, also compares the running 
gait of the animal to that of a mule, but he does 
not seem to have spent as much time in observ- 
ing these unique animals as he might have done, 
for he omits, even in his description of the species 
in the British Museum Catalogue of Ungulate 
Mammals, to note .the difference betweejn the 
winter; and summer coats, the reversal of the hair 
along the middorsal line, and the curious and 
conspicuous hair-whorls. 
The Duke's herd of these unique deer, from 
which came the individual now at the Zoo, as a 
gift from His Grace, is indeed precious and wor- 
thy of all study, for its members are the last of 
the species known to exist, Only a few had been 
sent to' Europe from China when a calamity hap- 
pened which exterminated the Chinese stock; the 
walls of the park were breached, -and the deer, 
straying outside, were all killed and eaten by the 
hungry peasantry, to whom, of course, they were 
simply so much excellent venison. The Woburn 
herd, therefore, are the only living examples of a 
very distinct and peculiar race of beasts upon the 
earth, and, in case of any calamity befalling them, 
the species would join the sad company of the 
Quagga, the Dodo, and other well-known vic- 
tims of the stupidity of man. 
It is sheer stupidity which has brought about 
extinction in most cases; when a species is rare, 
it seldom seems to occur to anyone that its exist- 
ence is in danger, and when this idea does strike 
some official exponent of science, instead of 
doing his best to preserve the creature, as the 
old Emperor and the modern Duke have done in 
the case of the deer we have been discussing, 
his great idea is generally to exterminate it in 
the cause of science, as \ remarked some time 
ago in this Magazine. The fact can hardly be 
"rubbed in" too often, now that more serious in- 
terests than those of animals may be involved, 
when the intellectual classes, especially scientists, 
appear to be aiming at the supremacy formerly 
held in human affairs by the landed gentry. 
A good example was fhe case of the peculiar 
Bullfinch of the Azores (Pyrrhula murina). This 
species, which in both sexes has a dull plumage 
like that of our female Bullfinch, and is thus of 
interest either as a survival from the time when 
the beautiful distinctive colouring of the males of 
