The other round-horned deer of the United States are the familiar Virginian, white-tailed, or willow deer, which is to be found all over the country, and in similar species in Mexico and Central America; the larger black-tailed, long-eared "mule deer," or "jumping deer," of the plains and the foothills of the Rocky Mountain region, and the small, forest-keeping, black-tail, or Columbian deer of Oregon and northward.
Canada, Alaska, and the northern parts of Maine and Minnesota, are the refuge of that biggest of all the deer, which we call by the Indian name "moose," but which is known to Europeans as "elk," for it is a circumpolar species that once roamed in great numbers through the woods of all Europe, and in this country far southward along the Appalachians. Until the World War the elk was preserved in certain large forests of Lithuania and central Russia, but it is doubtful if any survived the desolation of that region during and after the war. The moose is everywhere a forest-ranging animal, especially fond of regions where rivers and lakes abound, in which it finds desirable food in summer and takes much pleasure; yet in the mountainous West it often climbs to high and dry heights. Its principal diet is leaves and twigs, pulled off by the long, flexible lips that are so characteristic a feature. The moose is a huge, immensely strong and ungainly animal, blackish brown with pale legs and belly, and with a neck so short that it can graze only by kneeling. A very large bull may stand six and a half to seven feet high at the withers, which, with the neck, are clothed in a thick mantle of long, coarse, stiff hair; and from the throat hangs a long hairy strip of dew-lap skin (the "bell"), which in old age draws up into a sort of pouch. The long and narrow head ends in an overhanging, flexible muzzle, that may be curled around a twig like a proboscis. On this massive head and neck the bulls carry a wonderful pair of flattened antlers, always surprisingly wide in spread, but varying greatly in weight, and that irrespective of the relative bigness of the animal. The moose of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, are famous for the immensity and complication of their horns; one pair preserved in the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, have a spread of seventy-eight and a half inches, show thirty-four points, measure fifteen inches around the burr, and with the dry skull weigh ninety-three pounds; but very few reach such dimensions.
| REINDEER CROSSING A STREAM |
| From a prehistoric engraving on an antler found in southern France |
Another flat-horned deer is the famous reindeer of the boreal regions of both hemispheres, for our arctic caribou are the same animals under another name. No truly wild reindeer now exist in the Old World, but they are scattered over all the Barren Grounds, or treeless coast areas and islands, from Greenland to Alaska; and the Eskimos depend on them not only for food to some extent, but even more for clothing and tentage. Every autumn enormous herds of these caribou, gathered in migration, sweep southward to less frigid and snowy feeding grounds in the region between Hudson Bay and Great Slave Lake, and there enable the Indians to provide themselves with meat and skins for the winter. These arctic caribou feed mainly on the lichen called "reindeer moss." Another kind, the "woodland" caribou, inhabits the uncivilized forest borders south of the Barren Grounds, and the mountain region from British Columbia to the arctic shore of Alaska and Yukon; and in the east occurs in Ungava, Labrador, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick. They are not regularly migratory, but wander in small herds, prefer swampy woods, and their habits approach those of the moose. There is no great difference otherwise between them and the arctic caribou; but they vary a good deal, so that several species have been named among those of the west, one of which, in Alaska, is quite white.
Southeastern Asia has many kinds of deer, such as the large staglike sambar of India and eastward; the spotted axis, or chital; the sika of Japan; and a variety of small Oriental species exist.
| OKAPI |
| (Okapia johnstoni) |
| A relative of the giraffe, found in the forests of Africa |
The giraffes of equatorial Africa (family Giraffidæ) are closely related to the deer. They are hornless, but from the top of the skull project two protuberances, several inches in length, which answer to the horn-cores of the deer, but carry no antlers, and are permanently covered with hairy skin; between them is a third shorter protuberance of the skull. A few years ago it was discovered that there existed in the dense forests of the lower Congo valley an animal of this family, but smaller and more antelopelike in body, and without the towering characteristics of the giraffe, called by the Pygmies of that district "okapi" or "o'api." It is chestnut in color, with yellowish cheeks and the legs marked with wavy, whitish stripes. It is perhaps not rare, but is exceedingly difficult to obtain in the dense jungle it inhabits.
Two singular animals remain to be mentioned here, as standing intermediate between the deer and the cattle family, next to be considered. One of these is the musk deer of the Himalayas, from which is taken the "pod," or ventral gland, that contains the odorous substance "musk." This is a strange, old-fashioned, solitary little creature, the size of a half-grown kid, and having very large ears, almost no tail, and no horns, but wearing a pair of keen weapons in the long upper canines which hang well down below the lower jaw. The four toes of the feet are almost equal, and the hoofs so free that they can fairly grasp any projection, so that the animal is a marvel of agility and surefootedness.