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Show 1896.] DEER FROM NORTHERN CHINA. 931 the buttocks surrounding the tail. The tail is remarkable for its extreme shortness. There was no fringe of long hair on the throat, but this may have been due to immaturity or to season. In their present state of development, no conclusions can be drawn from the antlers. Something over two years may be given as the probable age of the animal. Such was the coloration of the specimen when I first saw it at the beginning of August (see Plate XLYIIL). When I again visited Woburn in the middle of September, tbe summer coat was being replaced by the winter one. The most extraordinary change was the development of a large yellowish disk on the buttocks, including all the tail. This disk was clearly produced by a change in the colour of the hairs of the summer coat; but it appeared to be also developing in the winter coat. The general colour of the latter seemed to be bluish grey, or brown, with a tendency to fawn on the neck. A distinct fringe had also developed on the throat. This was very thin, with bands of black, and white tips to the hairs : thus being quite different to the thick, uniformly-coloured fringe of the Wapiti and of the type of C. luehdorfi. Still later, the general colour of tbe coat became more Wapiti-like, and the caudal disk more distinct and brighter (see Plate XLIX.). From C. xanthopygus the Woburn deer appears sufficiently distinguished by the shortness of the taill; while there is no evidence that the former is ever without a caudal disk, or that the summer and winter coats are so widely different. Still, so far as I am aware, that form is only definitely known by the type specimen. Apparently, the species to which the deer under consideration approximates most closely is C. luehdorfi, although it is very difficult to believe that it is identical. The type specimens of Cervus luehdorfi, which comprised two pairs, were obtained from Transbaikalia, and were probably brought from the Bureatish Steppe of Northern Manchuria by nomads. The original descriptiona runs as follows:-"The Isubra Deer," as it is called, "is intermediate in height between the European Red Deer (C. elaphus) and the North-American Wapiti (C. canadensis). In size it is closer to the former, in the shape of the antlers to the latter. Its hair is in winter brownish grey, in summer light brown ; the throat has a small whitish median streak ; the under-lip is whitish, with three black spots, one small one in the middle, and two larger ones on each side. The strong mane is like that of the Wapiti- in colour dark chestnut-brown, in places almost black ; in summer it disappears almost completely. The eye is smaller than in the Red Deer. The tail is much shorter than either the Red Deer or the Wapiti; in the male it is only two-thirds of the absolute length of that of the Red Deer; relatively it is much shorter, as the 1 I assume that Milne-Edwards's plate is correct in this particular. If it be incorrect, and the present specimen turn out to belong to C. xanthopygus, that species will be much more distinct from the Bed Deer than has hitherto been supposed. 2 H. Bolau, Abh. Ver. Hamburg, vol. vii. p. 33, pl. iv. (1880). |
