290 American Deer 



year. It never enters the forests and thickets of Brazil and Paraguay, but 

 restricts itself to the open campos which extend here and there among the 

 forest tracts, and are also the habitat of the Brazilian rhea. On the 

 Argentine pampas the animal is found in more or less entirely open country. 

 Formerly, when the tussocks of tall pampas-grass were dotted more or 

 less thickly over all the plains, it had plenty of covert ; but in the more 

 settled districts it now has to live almost completely in the open, and has 



PlG. 76. — Young Male Pampas Deer. From a photograph by the Duchess of Bedford. 



consequently become wary in the extreme. The presence of a buck, 

 especially in the evening, may, however, often be detected by the character- 

 istic odour which will be perceptible at the distance of a mile or so. 

 These deer may be found either in pairs, in parties of three or four, or in 

 small herds, but the old bucks are often or always solitary for the 

 greater part of the year. Their times of feeding are much the same as 

 e of the marsh-deer, the animals remaining concealed under tussocks 

 of pampas-grass, or in such other shelter as they can find, and issuing forth 



