THE STORY OF THE DEER. 
10 ? 
while the ears are nearly double the size of those of the latter. The tail is 
short, and quite unlike that of any other deer, being round, naked below, and 
covered above with short white hairs, terminating in a long brush of black ones. 
In summer the coat of the mule-deer is very thin and sparse, and generally of a 
reddish color, with a large white patch on the buttocks ; but in winter the gen¬ 
eral color is steel-gray, the individual hairs being tipped with black. There is 
much more white on the face than in the Virginian deer. In a variety from 
MULE-DEER—BUCK AND DOE. 
California the color is more decidedly red, and there is a black line running 
along the middle of the upper surface of the tail. 
The mule-deer is found throughout the greater part of the Missouri River 
district, and thence westward on the plains, in the Rocky Mountains, and in the 
Sierra Nevada. It is an inhabitant of rough, broken country, and on the plains 
is usually only to be found about high buttes, in the bad-lands, or where the 
