68 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
Description. — fawn (2395 M. C. Z., from Citronelle, Florida, August 4, 1894) 
is nearly uniform “ochraceous buff” on the head and body above, paling to 
“warm buff” on the limbs and sides of neck and body; body spotted with white in 
a definite pattern : a line of spots on each side of spine from occiput to root of tail, 
succeeded by four or five less regular broken lines of spots on the sides from fore 
shoulder to haunch. Black bases of long hairs of tail showing through at the 
edges. 
An adult male in summer (108038 U. S. Biol. Surv., July 17, 1894, Citronelle, 
Florida, taken as representing the extreme southern virginianus) has the fore- 
head, neck all around, body and limbs above ochraceous buff, slightly warmer on 
forelegs, the center of back slightly darkened by showing through of a dark 
brownish band occupying about the middle third of each hair; sides and tip of 
tail above blackish with white fringe of long hairs from under side; ears dusky. 
Adult in winter much darker, the crown, neck all around, and the body, a 
finely grizzled mixture of pale ochraceous buff and dusky — nearly “sepia,” — 
each hair with a fine blackish tip, a narrow subterminal ring of pale ochraceous 
and then a long dusky portion, paling out toward the base. Short hair on cheeks 
and muzzle similar but the pale band nearly grayish. Younger animals have the 
ochraceous buff less intense. A female from South Carolina, probably a yearling, 
has the pale annulus nearly “light buff”, clearer on the legs but on the body 
much subordinated, producing a very dusky appearance with a clear dusky 
median stripe extending over the upper surface of the back and tail. 
Skull. — Adult skulls equal in size those of average borealis, nor are the tooth 
rows inferior in length. The antlers of the average adult male have, as is well 
known, an inner tine a short distance above the burr, and three others on the 
upper side of the beam, the most proximal of which is usually the longest. Occa- 
sional especially vigorous adults have additional tines which may be irregularly 
developed. The basal portion of the antler from the burr to the first tine is on 
the average set at only a slight angle to the long axis of the skull, so that the line 
from burr to tip of basal tine tends to be more or less parallel to that axis and 
results in giving the tips of the beams in adults a tendency to approximate each 
other more or less closely. Nevertheless, this is not invariable, and occasional 
heads of southern deer have the antlers depressed and as wide-spreading as those 
in the North. 
Weight. — Reliable weight-records for typical Virginia deer are not readily 
available. Cory (1912, p. 62) writing of the deer in Florida, states that though 
full-grown bucks often weigh not over 110 pounds, “these, however, are smaller 
than the average, and I have killed at least one specimen in southern Florida 
which weighed more than 200 pounds For many years I carried 
steelyards with me in the field for the purpose of weighing large game. 
One buck weighed 204 pounds and during a dozen years I have killed others 
which .... were fully as large.” A hunter who has killed many 
deer in Volusia County, Florida, assures us that the deer in Palm Beach County, 
to the south, where he has hunted of late years, average some thirty pounds less, 
indicating probably a gradual diminution in bulk as one proceeds southward. 
Remarks. — Some diflSculty has been experienced in determining the color 
characters of the typical Virginia deer, for lack of summer skins from near the 
type locality. While the limited material at hand seems to indicate that the 
