YOUNG HIMALAYAN MUSK-DEER.
The male carries a pouch on the abdomen, from which the musk is obtained. There are no antlers.
When the Kaiser holds his great Court hunting-parties, to which the guests all come dressed in the uniform of the Order of St. Hubert, as many as 200 deer are shot in a day. They are driven past the guns by beaters. After the day's sport is over all the antlers are wreathed with boughs of spruce fir, and the stags laid out like rabbits after an English battue.
It is rather surprising that only one species of deer has been entirely domesticated—viz. the Reindeer. Deer's meat is as highly prized as that of any other game, perhaps even more so. There is almost no part of the animal which is not useful. The horns are valuable for knife-handles, and always command a good price; they were prized even by prehistoric man, who converted them into pick-axes, and made spear-heads and daggers of them. The leather of the hide makes the softest and best of all hunting-garments: the American Indian or trapper always wears, or used to wear, a deer-skin shirt and deer-skin leggings, made as exquisitely soft as chamois leather by a process known to the squaws. At the present time all the best gloves are made of doe-skin; they are far the most costly of any gloves. Doe-skin breeches are also a luxurious garment to ride in. For ornamental rugs few skins beat those of the Dappled Deer, laid on the floor of some finely furnished hall or room.
Thus we have the curious spectacle of the wild men of the Far North, the Lapps and Ostiaks, taming and keeping in domestication great herds of deer, milking them, using them as beasts of draught, and feeding on their flesh, while far more civilised races in the South have not taken the trouble to do so. The reason is not easy to surmise, unless it be that the idea of making use of the Deer Tribe solely as beasts of the chase was so rooted in the European ruling races, and their kings and nobles, that the agriculturist never had a chance of trying to tame and use them for other purposes. It is certain that during the Middle Ages law and custom made any such attempt quite impossible. The deer were a valuable sporting asset, so hedged round with an atmosphere of feudal privilege, that to convert them into something useful to the common people would have been regarded as an insult to the powers that were.
Photo by Neurdein Frères] [Paris.
THE CAMEL-PLOUGH, USED IN ALGIERS.
Camels are often used for agricultural purposes in North Africa, Syria, and India. In this particular case a special kind of plough is employed.