ZOOLOGY. 
69 
by a shout, when she turned her head directly toward him, and he fired at the distance of two 
hundred yards. The deer went crashing off through the brush, and as we had plainly seen 
the plash of the hall in the water a long way beyond where she stood, we thought he had missed. 
Bartee, however, knew better what dependence to place on his eye and his Hawkins’ rifle, and 
beckoning us to come on, he ran forward to take her trail. We followed, hut with no great 
confidence of success. On reaching the trail, we found it blood-marked, and, before we had 
gone a dozen rods further, the wild death cry of the deer gave us the best possible evidence of 
the accuracy of Bartee’s aim. When we reached the deer she was quite dead ; the hall had 
entered the breast, traversing, the lungs and the heart diagonally, and passed out near the last 
rib. It was a doe of rather large size, evidently suckling a fawn which she had left “cached” 
somewhere in the manzanita hushes; and, having gone to the river to drink, was returning with 
maternal haste to her charge, when the fatal bullet had deprived her of life. The incident 
suggested some sad reflections not readily dissipated by thoughts of our necessities, which had 
become pressing ; but we were partially consoled by the assurance from Bartee that fawns, at 
that season, were old enough to shift for themselves. 
This deer was new to me, and entirely different from any I had seen in California, as well as 
from the Virginian deer of the eastern States. From my notes, made at the time, I take the 
following description : 
Wednesday, August 29.—Bartee killed suckling doe of rather large size, compared with Cali¬ 
fornian deer. Ears very large, (eight inches long,) rump sloping. Shedding summer coat, 
composed of long, coarse, reddish brown hair, which was of much the character of the hair of 
the antelope, like threads cut short off. Under coat soft and fine, of a bluish grey; white patch 
on rump, like that on antelope, but less broad. Tail of moderate length, (nine inches,) reddish- 
brown on top, white on sides, and black at tip, without hair below. Gland of hind legs very 
long. Though animal was poor, the flesh was very tender and well flavored. 
This, though so great a novelty to the Californians of our party that they suggested that it 
must be a hybrid between the antelope and the Californian black-tailed deer, was the mule deer, 
Cervus macrotis, Say. I was then with a detachment detailed for a special purpose, and had no 
antiseptics for the preservation of the skin, and the zoologist of our party was in our depot camp. 
I carried the skin until it began to decompose, and I was obliged to content myself with the 
head and skin of head, legs and tail. These I preserved, and they coincide with Say’s descrip¬ 
tion of those parts in the mule deer of the upper Missouri. 
The physical geography of the Des Chutes basin unites that territory to the Rocky mountain 
desert, and its fauna generally will be found to have greater affinity with that of the Rocky 
mountains and upper Missouri than with that of California. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that we find G. macrotis westward to the base of the Cascade mountains, or, in other words, to 
the base of the wall which forms the western limit to the enclosure of the interior basin. 
CERVUS COLUMBIANUS, Rich. 
Black-tailed Deer. 
Cervus macrotis , var. columbianus, Richardson, F. B. Am. I, 1829, 255 ; pi. xx. 
Cervus columbianus, Baird, Gen. Bep. Mammals, 1857, 659. 
Cervus macrotis, Rich. F. Bor. Am. I, 1829, 254 ; pi. xx. 
Cervus lewisii, Peale, Mammalia and Birds U. S. Ex. Ex. 1848, 39. 
Cervus Richardsonii, Aud. & Bacii. N. Am. Quad. II, 1851, 211.—In. Ill, 1853, 27 ; pi. cvi. 
? Cervus (Cariacas) punctulatus, Gray, Pr. Zool. Soc. Bond. XVIII, 1850, 239 ; pi. xxviii.—Ic. Knowsley Menag. 
1850, 67. 
Black-tailed fallow deer, Lewis & Clark. 
