In a letter I received from Mr. Colinson, in 1765, he informed me that the Duke of Richmond had several of the species of the Ganges Stags, or, as I have called it, Axis, in his park; that they lived familiarly with the fallow-deer, did not form separate herds, but even propagated together, and that from the intermixture beautiful varieties were produced.
There was a male and female Chinese fallow-deer in the royal menagerie in the year 1764; they were above two feet four inches in height; they were dark brown on the body and tail, mixed in several places with large yellow hairs, and yellow on the belly and legs. Though smaller than either the fallow-deer or axis, it was probably only a variety of the latter, and with whom it might intermix and be perpetuated even in France, especially as they are both natives of the eastern regions of Africa.[K]
[K] Sonnini observes, that the snout of the axis is shorter than that of the stag, and his head is nearly as long as that of the fallow-deer.
Engraved for Barr’s Buffon
FIG. 145. Zebu.
