OSGOOD — pennant’s MEXICAN DEER 
75 
THE STATUS OF PENNANT’S ^‘MEXICAN DEER” 
By Wilfred H. Osgood 
1 
[Plate 4\ 
In a brief paper in 1902/ I attempted to show that Gmelin’s name 
€ervus mexicanus, based on Pennant’s Mexican Deer, should be used 
for the white-tailed deer of the Valley of Mexico. My belief that the 
name should be regarded as identifiable was based on giving primary 
importance to Pennant’s description and figure of an actual specimen, 
while Dr. J. A. Allen, ^ who proposed discarding the name as unidenti- 
fiable, gave preference to Pennant’s first citation, the Teuthlalmagame ^ 
of Hernandez. Since there is still no uniformity of usage in regard to 
the name and especially since I am now able to present a photograph 
of Pennant’s specimen, it seems advisable to restate and amplify my 
former contention. 
In 1771, Pennant,® under the vernacular name Mexican Deer^ 
published the following description: 
D. [eer] with strong thick rugged horns, bending forward; ten inches long; 
nine between point and point ; trifurcated in the upper part ; one erect snag about 
two inches above the base : by accident subject to vary in the number of branches : 
head large: neck thick: eyes large, and bright: about the size of the European 
Roe: color of the hair reddish; when young spotted with white. 
Inhabits Mexico, Guiana, and Brazil; not only the internal parts of the country, 
but even the borders of the plantations: the flesh inferior to that of European 
venison. A species very distinct from the Roe of the old continent. 
This description was accompanied by a woodcut of a frontlet and 
pair of antlers showing the characters mentioned and making it perfectly 
obvious that both description and figure were taken from an actual 
specimen examined by the describer. There were in addition, as 
customary, a number of citations of earlier authors including those 
which Pennant supposed to be based upon the same species of deer as 
the one he himself had described. 
In dealing with names based solely upon citations, it has been the 
practice to regard one as the primary reference, this usually but not 
always being the first one, and if this proves satisfactorily identifiable, 
slight discrepancies in the remaining ones have been disregarded. A 
1 Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 15, pp. 87-88, Apr. 25, 1902. 
2 Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 16, p. 16, footnote, Feb. 1, 1902. 
2 Synopsis of Quadrupeds, p. 54, pi. 9, fig. 3. 
