CERVUS VIRGINIANUS, Pennant. Common Deer, ( Virginia Deer).

The common deer of the United States is, at the present day, too well known to need a special description. No State in the Union is without individuals of this species. In many sections of the country, as the Alleghanies and Adirondacks, they are exceedingly abundant, and not much less so in many of the southern Atlantic States. Their range extends from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Rocky mountains, beyond which its existence is not substantiated. It varies somewhat in its features over this extensive district, being much larger in the north, and decreasing to the south by almost one-half. Epicures assert that this difference in size is accompanied by a difference in the quality of the fat when cooked and cooled. In the north, the fat on the surface soon cools and congeals, becoming like tallow or mutton suet; whereas in Florida, where it sometimes cuts an inch on the saddle, it remains soft or elastic for some time after being taken from the fire, and is of delicious taste, like the fat of beef. The economical qualities of this deer are of the first order. The excellence of its flesh in the form of venison is well known to every one. The dressed hide, as buckskin, is of the highest importance to the Indian for the construction of various articles of dress, and scarcely less so to the white hunter. The horns are converted into handles for cutlery.

The male deer loses its horns in January, the new set commencing to sprout out after the lapse of a few weeks. These require their full growth by July or August, after which they are in their prime. The rutting season commences in October or November, during which period terrible battles are fought. Not unfrequently, bucks are found with their antlers interlocked inextricably, and dead of starvation.

The young are brought forth in April or May-sometimes later—in the northern States. The average number at a birth is two, three being not

uncommon.

The Virginia deer is exceeeingly susceptible of domestication, although, when petted, it is apt to become troublesome. Individuals are frequently kept in parks, where, however, they do not thrive so well as the European fallow deer. Their agility is so great as to render it a matter of seTious difficulty to keep them within enclosures.

CERVUS LEUCURUS, Douglas. Long-Tailed Deer.

This species, if it be really distinct, is the smallest of all the American deer, presenting in its dimensions a striking contrast to the moose. In general appearance it resembles the Virginia deer; it is, however, smaller, and has a tail of great length, measuring sometimes as much as seventeen inches. It is found abundantly on the Columbia river, but does not appear to cross the Rocky mountains-at least within the territory of the United States.

CAPRA AMERICANA, Blainville. Rocky-Mountain Goat.

This beautiful animal is frequently confounded with the big horn, or mountain sheep, from which it differs in many important characters. It is of the size of the domestic sheep, and bears no inconsiderable resem blance to the merino breed in the way in which the fleece hangs down on the sides. The body, neck, and head resemble those of the common goat. The horns are small, awl-shaped, and pointed, and nearly erect, with but a slight curvature backwards. Both horns and hoofs are black. The animal is entirely white, with the exception just named.

The body is covered with long, straight hair, considerably coarser than the wool of the sheep, but softer than that of the common goat. This hair is abundant on the shoulders, neck, back, and thighs; a considerable tuft of it, attached to the chin, forms a beard. There is likewise much of it on the chest and lower part of the throat. The tail is short, and, though clothed with long hair, is almost concealed by that which covers the rump. Under the hair of the body there is a close coat of fine white wool. The hair on the face and legs is short, the fetlocks short and, with the hoofs, perpendicular. The small posterior hoofs do not touch the ground.

To the agriculturist and manufacturer, the mountain goat affords a promise of importance which we may well hope to see realized. No wild species can compare with it in the excellence of its fleece, which, even in its original state, is as fine as that of the celebrated Cashmere goat. Careful management, under domestication, would, no doubt, increase this character to an extraordinary degree. Hence it is not remarkable that. attention should have been directed to this species with a view to its cultivation. The Highland Society at one time made an effort to introduce this animal into Scotland, where it was supposed it would thrive. Owing, however, to the inaccessibility of its nature, it was found impossible to obtain specimens. At the present time, such might perhaps be procured through the agency of the American Fur Company, to one of whose posts, Fort Benton, on the Upper Missouri, above the falls, skins are occasionally brought.

A competent wool-grower in Scotland, to whom the subject was referred, reported that "the wool which forms the chief covering of the skin is fully an inch and a half long, and of the finest quality. It is unlike the fleece of the common sheep, which contains a variety of dif ferent kinds of wool, suitable to the fabrication of articles very dissimilar in their nature, and requires much care to distribute them in their proper order. The fleece under consideration is wholly fine. That on the fore part of the skin has all the apparent qualities of wool; that on the back part very much resembles cotton. The whole fleece is much mixed with hairs, and on those parts where the hairs are long and pendant there is almost no wool."

The mountain goat inhabits the loftiest peaks of the Rocky mountain range, seldom coming down to the plains. They frequent the steepest: precipices, and have much of the habit of the common goat. The species is common on those high lands of the Rocky mountains whence flow the four great rivers-the McKenzie, the Columbia, the Missouri,. and the Nelson; each one emptying into a different ocean. Their range is between the parallels of 40° and 64°. The only point within the

United States where they are well known is about Fort Benton, whence we have seen a single hunter's skin. No animal is less known to our naturalists, there being not a single preserved specimen, to the best of our knowledge, in any museum within the United States. Travellers who speak of the mountain goat sometimes refer to the big horn, the female of which has horns much like those of a goat.

ANTILOCAPRA AMERICANA, Ord. Prong-Horn Antelope.

The prong-horn antelope is familiar to every hunter on the plains west of the Missouri river. From this line it extends to the Pacific ocean, and ranges from northern Mexico to the latitude of 53° on the Saskatchewan. It is also abundant in Minnesota, especially on the plains of Red river. On the Missouri it does not occur south of L'Eau qui Court.

The antelope is highly prized as an article of food. When young, the flesh tastes much like venison, although superior to it in flavor; the old animals, however, are frequently very rank.

This species is found at times in immense numbers, almost realizing the tales of the antelopes of south Africa. Herds of a thousand and more have not unfrequently been seen. They run with great swiftness, and all their motions are characterized by ease and grace.

To the Indians, in the absence of buffalo, the prong-horn antelope is of great importance as an article of food. They are shot with the bow and arrow under cover, but the most usual way of catching them is in pens. These pens are formed of branches of trees arranged in a circle, one side of which is incomplete, and approached by a lane formed of walls of the same material, widening outwards. Into the open extremity of this lane the antelopes are gently urged by the Indians, and thence along into the circle; whereupon the opening is filled up by means of brush, and the work of destruction commenced with arrows and clubs. Although exceedingly nimble, yet such is their stupidity that they will not attempt to leap the barriers which confine them, however slight. The hunter frequently lures them within gun shot by lying flat on the ground, and elevating from time to time a red silk handkerchief or a cap, by which the curiosity of the animal is excited.

OVIBOS MOSCHATUS, Blainville. Musk Or.

A specimen of the skin of the ovibos moschatus, or musk ox, sent to England by Hearne, the celebrated traveller, gave Pennant the opportunity of describing and systematically arranging it; which M. Blainvillehas placed, as its Latin name implies, in a genus intermediate between the sheep and the ox. A slight information of it had been previously obtained through the medium of M. Jeremie, who has the credit of having first brought it into public notice by the produce of some stockings made from its wool, which were said to be even far more beautiful in appearance than silk. By its dense woolly coat, it is effectually protected from the severest weather; and the shortness of its legs renders it admirably suited to the barren grounds, of which it forms one of the characteristic inhabitants.

By the term "barren," the traders designate the northeastern corner

BISON AMERICANUS, Cm. Buffalo.

This, the most gigantic of the indigenous mammalia of America, once overspread the entire northern half of the continent. At the time of the discovery by the Spaniards, an inhabitant even down to the shores of the Atlantic, it has been beaten back by the westward march of civilization, until, at the present day, it is only after passing the giant Missouri and the head-waters of the Mississippi that we find the American bison or buffalo. Many causes have combined to drive them away from their old haunts: the wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter by the whites, the extension of settlements, and the changes of the face of the country; but, above all, that mysterious dread of the white man, which pervades animal life in general as a congenital instinct.

Still, it would appear that the buffalo was originally confined within certain limits, which, perhaps, varied from time to time, as they certainly have done within comparatively a recent period. We have already referred to the fact of their existence on the Atlantic coast; how far north they extended is not exactly known. Their existence in Pennsylvania, however, is substantiated by the occurrence of bones of this species in alluvial deposits of rivers, bogs, and caves. At the first settlement of Canada they were not known there. As to their southern range, Lawson speaks of their being found on Cape Fear river, in North Carolina. Theuet, in the very rare work entitled "Les Singularitez de la France antarctique," Paris, 1557, gives, (p. 147,) in a representation of a curiousbeast of West Florida, a readily recognisable figure of the buffalo. In the Hudson Bay country they did not pass east of the latitude of Red river; south they were found throughout the Mississippi valley, the south Atlantic States, Texas, and Mexico. Their western range was strictly limited to the Rocky mountains, none extending beyond.

At the present time none are found in the Atlantic States, nor even east of the Missouri, except in Minnesota, in the region of the upper Mississippi, and the prairies of the Red river of the north. Their main range, however, is between the Missouri and the Rocky mountains, from Texas and New Mexico to the Saskatchewan, and even as far north as Great Martin lake, lat. 64°. Of late years they have found their way through the Rocky mountains to the plains of the Columbia by the great middle pass, and north of this on the head-waters of the Saskatch

ewan.

Imagination can scarcely realize the numbers of buffalo which, even now, are found on the western plains. It is not uncommon to see the prairies covered with them as far as the eye can reach; and travellershave passed through them for days and days in succession, with scarcely any apparent dimension in the mass. The paths worn in the plains resemble more the beaten highways of civilization than the mereaggregation of individual hoof-marks. As their routes are, in most cases, selected with the unerring instinct of animal existence, extending in a straight line from one convenient crossing-place of river or ravine to another, and taking the most available springs or streams in their course, they well justify the remark of Mr. Benton as to their agency in defining the high roads of travel across the prairies, for which they frequently serve almost without an alteration.

Still, vast as these herds are, their numbers are much less than in

earlier times, and they are diminishing with fearful rapidity. Every year sees more or less change in this respect, as well as alterations of their great line of travel. To the Indian, dependent for the very necessaries of life upon the buffalo, these facts come home with stern reality. His existence is bound up inseparably with that of the race of buffalo, and every consideration of humanity to the one prompts a care over the other.

If it were possible to enforce game-laws, or any other laws on the prairies, it would be well to attach the most stringent penalties against the barbarous practice of killing buffalo merely for the sport, or perhaps for the sake of the tongue alone. Thousands are killed every year in this way. After all, however, it is, perhaps, the Indian himself who commits the mischief most wantonly. A frequent mode of hunting the buffalo by them consists in making a "surround." This is done by enclosing a large herd and driving them over a precipice upon the rocks, or into one of the profound ravines which intersect the prairies in various directions. In this way thousands are sometimes killed in a single day. Fires in prairies, too, do their share in the work of destruction, either by their immediate agency or by driving the maddened animals into the ravines just referred to.

Mr. Picotte, an experienced partner of the American Fur Company, estimated the number of buffalo robes sent to St. Louis in 1850 at 100,000. Supposing each of the 60,000 Indians on the Missouri to use ten robes for his wearing apparel every year, besides those for new lodges and other purposes, by the calculation of Mr. Picotte we shall have an aggregate of 400,000 robes. We may suppose 100,000 as the number killed wantonly, or destroyed by fire or other causualties, and we will have the grand total of half a million of buffalo destroyed every year. This, too, does not include the numbers slaughtered on Red river, and other gathering points.

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that the American bison is not found in the Old World. A European species of the same genus, bos, and closely allied, is the bos urus, auerochs of Germany, urus of Cæsar, bonossus of Aristotle, and bison of Pausanius and Pliny. This species, once of rather wide range, is now confined to the country between the Caspian and the Black sea, where it is protected from injury by the severest legislative enactments. Other species are found in various other parts of the world.

The skins of the American buffalo are dressed as follows: After being taken off the animal, they are hung on a post, and the adhering flesh taken -off with a bone, toothed something like a saw. This is performed by scraping the skin downward, requiring much labor. The hide is then stretched on the ground, and fastened down with pegs; it is then allowed to remain a day or two, or till dry. After this, the flesh side is pared down with the blade of a knife fastened in a bone, called a grate, which renders the skin even, and takes off about a quarter of its thickness. The hair is taken off with the same instrument; and these operations being performed, and the skin reduced to a proper thickness, it is covered over either with brains, liver, or grease, and left for a night. The next day the skin is rubbed and scraped, either in the sun or by a fire, until the greasy matter has been worked into it, and it is nearly dry; a cord is then fastened to two poles, and over this the skin is thrown, and pulled,