THE DEER OF ASIA 
The mountain systems have a general linear direction from north to 
south. Wapiti only are found here. 
With the last section we have no immediate concern. Generally speaking 
the Central Asiatic tableland may be described as extending from the 
basin of the Amu Daria eastwards to the main bend of the Hwang -ho and 
from the Himalayas north-westward to the Siberian plain. The general 
distribution of true stags has proceeded in the main along one or other 
of two determinate lines. 
(1) A southern and western line, which may be clearly traced along 
existing areas of elevation from the Alps to the Himalayas, and 
(2) A northern and eastern line which may be traced in the same way 
from the Rocky Mountains to the Tian Shan. 
These lines of travel are interrupted now by the Bering Strait and the 
Turkoman Desert, which has obliterated the ancient river system formerly 
linking the Transcaspian forests with those of the Hindu Kush. Volcanic 
action, which finally culminated in the tremendous upward thrust of the 
Tibetan plateau, sharply severed the elaphine stock from that of the 
rusine to the south and the sikine to the east. Not only this. It severed the 
main elaphine stock itself into two principal branches along the line of the 
Gobi depression. 
(1) The northern branch, the ancestors of the wapitis, found a centre of 
evolution in the Siberian watershed, whilst 
(2) The southern branch found a centre of evolution in the Himalayas, 
isolating at the same time one or more individual groups which stood 
outside the main lines of descent and distribution. Of these latter the 
white-muzzled Tibetan stag (C. albirostris) is a conspicuous example. 
The range of the red deer in Asia is restricted to the northern provinces 
of Asiatic Turkey — Asia Minor, Turkish Armenia and Kurdistan — together 
with North Persia. Their headquarters are the mountain ranges forming 
the southern barrier of the Black Sea coast, which extend with scarcely a 
break from the main ridges of the Caucasus to the shores of the ^Egean, 
and the range of the Anti Taurus running from Mount Argaeus to Mount 
Ararat, of which the western slopes are thickly forested. The Brousa 
district round Mount Olympus in the west and the Erzerum district at the 
head waters of the Euphrates to the east hold many good stags. Two speci- 
mens of deer brought back from the Ak Dagh, two hundred miles inland 
from Smyrna, by Mr J. Horlick in 1912, though shot within a compara- 
tively short distance of one another, present marked differences, one being 
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