BOTANIC GARDENS MENAGERIE. 165 



Indeed females are not so common in captivity as males. 

 This may perhaps be due to the fact that the female is much 

 more difficult to move about than the male, as it fights vio- 

 lently when attempts are made to catch it and often gets 

 injured or dies of shock. It is curious that the deer which 

 stands injuries from gunshot wounds etc. very easily is very 

 apt to be injured fatally in catching and transhipping. A deer 

 to be conveyed from place to place must never have its feet 

 tied, as if this is done the animal will almost certainly die. 



The Sambur buck when adult is often extremely danger- 

 ous, and will attack people in a ferocious manner when quite 

 unprovoked. A very fine one which had been brought up 

 from a fawn, on one occasion attacked a cooly from behind 

 who was filling its watertank and threw him to the top of 

 the fence whence he scrambled down, inflicting a number 

 of stabs on his legs and thighs. On another occasion by 

 breaking a bar it got into an enclosure with a black buck 

 which it attacked and lifted and carried about on its antlers. 

 The black buck was rescued and the deer driven back into the 

 enclosure, but taking advantage of the tub of water between 

 the two enclosures being removed, he managed by lying down 

 and wriggling through the small space to get again into the 

 black buck's enclosure and killed it by one stab through the 

 liver. 



Deer in the tropics require a mudbafch like a buffalo, and 

 delight to wallow in it and cover themselves with mud. I 

 have disturbed them at this refreshment in the forest in 

 Singapore. They also require a dark house or stable to live 

 in or otherwise they are pestered with flies. All attempts to 

 stop this nuisance failed till the idea of making a perfectly dark 

 stable in the enclosure occurred and this was found to be quite 

 effective. The deer were quite free from the flies in the dark, 

 and remained there most of the day. Even wild deer seem to 

 be pestered in this manner. Once in Selangor I saw at a 

 Sakai encampment, a pet doe, which lived loose in the woods 

 and came out only when the Sakais called it and when they 

 did so I observed that a number of these flies' (one of the Mus- 

 ca-s) came with it. A friend who was with me was anxious 



E. A. Soc, No. 46, 1906. 



