55 
THE DEER. 
These animals, which are spread over all parts of the Globe, are easily recognized by their deciduous horns, 
which are covered, when they are first developed, with a hairy skin. 
It has been supposed that the Deer were not to be found in Africa, but the discovery of a species in 
Barbary has dispelled that idea ; they are rare in that extensive quarter of the world, their place being 
supplied by Antelopes. 
Since the publication of Cuvier's Essay on Deer, in which he described several species from the study of 
the horns alone, many zoologists have almost entirely depended on the horns for the character of the species, 
and Colonel Hamilton Smith has been induced to separate some species on the study of a single horn. But 
the facilities which menageries have afforded of studying these animals, and watching the variations which 
the horns of the species present, have shown that several most distinct but allied species, as the Stag of 
Canada and India, have horns so similar that it is impossible to distinguish them by their horns. On the 
other hand, it has been shown that animals of the same herd, or even family, and sometimes even the same 
specimen, under different circumstances, in succeeding years have produced horns so unlike one another in 
size and form, that they might have been considered, if their history was not known, as horns of very 
different species. These observations, and the examination of the different cargoes of foreigji horn which 
are imported for the uses of the cutler, each cargo of which is generally collected in a single locality, and 
therefore most probably belong to a single species peculiar to the district, — have proved to me that the 
horns afford a much better character to separate the species into groups, than to distinguish the allied 
species from one another. 
Colonel Hamilton Smith, in his Monograph of the Genus, separated them into subgenera according to 
the form of the horns. 
In the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1836 I drew attention to the glands on the hind-legs 
as affording very good characters to arrange the genera proposed by Colonel Smith into natural groups, 
which in most particulars agreed with the geographical distribution of the species. 
Dr. Sundeval, in his Essay on Pecora, has availed himself of the suggestions in my paper, and has also 
pointed out some other external characters, such as the form and extent of the muffle, which afford good 
marks of distinction in these animals, — such as I believe are much more important for the distinction of 
the genera and species than those derived from the form of the skull or the modifications of the teeth, or 
the form and size of the horns ; as they are not, like those parts, so liable to alteration from age, local cir- 
cumstances and other changes during the growth of the animal, and they can be seen in the females as 
well as the males, which is not the case with the horns, as they can only be observed in the male sex. 
The Deer may be thus divided : — 
A. The Deer of the Snowy Regions have a very broad muzzle, entirely covered with hair ; the horns are 
expanded and palmated, and the fawns are not spotted. 
a. The Alcine Deer have no basal anterior snag to the horns, and a small, bald muffle between the 
nostrils, as the genus Aids. 
b. The Rangerine Deer have a large basal anterior snag to the horns, close on the crown or burr, and no 
muffle, as Tarandus. 
