Mule-Deer 277 



St. Lucas are noticed by Mr. Caton, 1 who refers especially to the simple 

 form of the antlers, which are of a degraded type. Several of the other 

 mammals from the same district are distinguished from their representatives 

 to the northwards by their brighter coloration. 



Distribution. — The extreme south of the Californian Peninsula. 



d. Western Desert Race — Mazama hemionus eremica 

 Dorcehiphus hemionus eremicus, M earns, Proc. U. S. Mi/s. vol. xx. p. 470 



(■8 97 ). 



Characters. — The following is the original description of this sub- 

 species : — The mule-deer of the Western Desert Tract, like all mammals 

 of that region, is remarkable for the extreme pallor of its coloration. An 

 adult male, taken in December 1895, in the Sierra Seri, near the Gulf of 

 California, in the most arid portion of Sonora, Mexico, is in full winter 

 pelage. The coat is short and glossy. Coloration above verv pale drab- 

 gray, with a dark vertebral area, which begins as a narrow median stripe 

 on the upper side of the neck, broadens and becomes fainter on the back, 

 forms a blackish spot at the root of the tail, down which it descends for a 

 short distance. The buttocks, inguinal, and abdominal regions, and the 

 middle of the tail all around are white. The axilla? and hollows of the 

 thighs are entirely naked. The edges of the buttocks, posterior surface of 

 limbs, and the feet are washed with pale, muddy cinnamon. The chest is 

 light sooty drab. Tail with a heavy brush or short switch of black hair at 

 the end, the middle portion being white all around, the dusky colour 

 running down a short distance on the upper side from the blackish spot at 

 its base. While the general effect is to produce a pale drab-gray colour- 

 ing of the upper surface, there is the usual pepper-and-salt commingling 

 of colours, produced by light and dark annulation of the hairs, those in the 

 vertebral area being pointed with brownish black. It appears to be a 

 larger animal than the mule-deer of the Eastern Desert Tract, and, unless 

 the specimens are abnormal, its antlers are heavier and more divergent, 

 being remarkable for the great length of the beam before forking. In a 

 youngish specimen from the Sonoyta Valley they are doubly dichotomous 

 throughout, having four points, besides a basal snag, on each. Another 



1 Amer. Naturalist, vol. x. p. 468 (1876). 



