206 
ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
recesses of the forest, all depend upon these animals 
for their chief subsistence, and find in them their most 
certain and familiar resource where no other provisions 
art^ to be procured. What the ox and the sheep are to 
settled and civilized man, are the Deer of his native 
woods to the wild and uncultivated savage. 
But it is not merely as a means of subsistence that 
these animals are hunted down by the tyrants of the 
creation. The passion of the chase is not one of those 
passions which are engendered by necessity alone. It 
glows with equal ardour in the bosoms of the most 
civilized nations and in those of the most barbarous 
tribes. In the one as in the other it animates every 
breast ; and it matters little whether it be panem aut 
CircenseSy whether food or sport, that the huntsmen 
seek, the result is the same to the harmless animals 
that are marked out for their victims. Wherever they 
exist the Deer seem to be peculiarly destined to this 
unenviable preeminence, in the one case for their large 
size and the excellence of their flesh, and in the other 
for their extreme swiftness of flight. 
It might reasonably be imagined that a tribe of 
animals so familiarly known and affording so many 
opportunities for examination, would have been studied 
with the greatest minuteness, and that little would now 
remain to be learned respecting them. But this is very 
far indeed from the fact. Except the Rein-deer and 
the half domesticated races, none of them have been 
investigated with the accuracy which is requisite to put 
us in possession of their complete history ; and we have 
consequently a constant accumulation of new species, 
many of which will unquestionably, on a closer exami- 
nation, be found scarcely to deserve the name of varie- 
ties. This is especially the case with the Indian animals 
of the Rusa tribe, almost every specimen of which that 
