59 
many seasons he continued the acknowledged Head of all the Deer, though he was not without a frequent 
struggle for the dominion with some of his aspiring younger rivals. In one of these combats it is Supposed 
that he received a wound which made him for a time rather lame ; in consequence of which the keeper, he 
thinks in 1830, enticed him into the yard behind his house, and there doctored him till his recovery, upon 
which in a few months he was again restored to the full range of the Park. From that period, however, 
he never forgot the benefits he had received in the keeper's yard, and in subsequent severe seasons would 
often make his way into it and go to the bin from which the keeper had been accustomed to give him 
acorns, &c. during his illness ; and if he could contrive to open, would proceed to help himself. Even at 
other times, if the keeper met him in the Park, and called to him by his name, he would stop and stand 
still, look round him, and on recognizing his friend, would leave his hairy comrades and meet the caresses 
of his benefactor. On the keeper naming this once to Lord S., while walking in the Park, and Billy being 
in sight, the keeper called to him, and Lord Stanley, in the man's company, went up to him, spoke to, and 
patted him. From that time Lord S. shared also in the influence the keeper had over him, so as even to 
be able to introduce other persons to Billy's acquaintance, — among them myself ; but I have never ventured 
to exercise the same familiarity with him as my Son or the keeper, though whenever I have met him in the 
Park, and called to him by name, he would stop, recognize it, and advance towards me, even if I was in a 
carriage, though he would not then come very near up to it. He did not seem to care even if his friends had 
a gun in their hands, but a dog, especially a strange one, he had a great dislike to. Some dogs that the 
keeper kept in his back yard, Billy was very good friends with there, but if he met them loose in the Park 
they were as strangers to him. Thinking, both as a fine animal, and also on account of the singular circum- 
stances attending him, that it would be worth while to retain a Picture of him, Billy, in the year 1842, stood 
for his Portrait to a well-known talented artist of Liverpool in the line of animals, Mr. Richard Arsdell, who 
was at that time taking likenesses of several of the animals then in the Menagerie here, which Picture now 
hangs opposite to the Entrance Door in the Hall at Knowsley. For the two or three last years of his life 
poor Billy had become very infirm, and so evidently declining, that it was clear he could not longer resist his 
competitors unaided. The keeper therefore adopted the plan of placing him in a small clump of oldish 
trees, fenced in from the general Park during the winter months, and in that shelter he died in March 1845, 
having evinced for some time the infirmities of his advanced age. I do not, however, think that there had 
been much alteration in his Horns for the last few years, though what alteration there was, was for the worse ; 
and at the last his horns were so venj indiflferent, that when Thompson sent up the body to the British 
Museum, he did not send the last horns with Avhich he died, but a somewhat earlier and rather better pair, as 
the last were injured and broken in the animal's last struggles. Shaw tells me it was the last three winters 
that he was kept up in the plantation, from whence he would often lead him across the front green into 
his old quarters in the yard, and when there, if he could find an opportunity by the door being open, he 
would often enter the kitchen and lie down like a dog before the fire." 
The Barbary Deer. Cerms Barbarus. 
Dark brown ; obscurely white spotted, with a very indistinct, greenish brown, broad dorsal line, with 
a pale yellow spot extended considerably above the base of the tail ; back of haunches white, with 
a dark stripe on each side. 
Cerms Barbarus, Bennett, MSS. Catal. Gardens Zool. See. — C. Elaphus Corsicams, Erxl., from . — Cerf 
de Corse, Buffon, H. N. vi. 95. t. II.— Burk-Goat (Al-Wassai), Moors (see Griffith, A. K. v. 776). 
Inhabits Coast of Barbary ; Tunis. — Corsica ?? 
The Earl of Derby observes : — 
" A Stag and two Hinds were sent for me by Sir Thomas Reade ; but one Hind never reached Knows- 
ley, having, as I understood, died on board, in the river Mersey, before they could be landed. The sur- 
vivors are still living and well, in March 1846, and have produced as below: 
A PAIR, 
Presented by Sir Thomas Reade, August 26, 1841. 
I T "~T T ^ 1 
A FEMALE, A FEMALE, A FEMALE, A MALE, Served in Oct. 1845. 
Fawned in Summer 1843. Fawned in May? 1843. Fawned June 4, 1844. Fawned May 26, 1845. 
Killed by the Sire, Dec.? 1842. Died Sept. 19, 1845. 
" I have just learned from J. T. that we have lost the younger of the Two Barbary Hinds, which you 
may therefore as well mark off on the pedigree. The other three are doing very well, and I dare say some 
of these will be among Eraser's collection." — March 24, 1846. 
It is probable that this Deer is the same as the Deer which BufFon describes under the name of the 
Cerf de Corse, which has been regarded as a variety to be distinguished by the smallness of its size. But 
