or Deer, in zoology, a genus of quadrupeds belonging to the order of pecora. The horns are solid, brittle, covered with a hairy skin, and growing from the top; they likewise fall off and are renewed annually. There are eight fore-teeth in the under jaw, and they have no dog-teeth. The species of this genus enumerated by Linnaeus are seven, viz:

1. The Camelopardalis, or Giraffe, with simple or unbranched horns, and the fore-feet remarkably longer than the hind-feet. This is an uncommon animal, few of them having ever been seen in Europe. It is a native of Ethiopia, and is very mild and gentle: the head is like that of a stag; its horns are blunt and about six inches long. The neck resembles that of a camel, but is much longer, being sometimes seven feet in length. The body is small, covered with white hair, and spotted with red. He is 18 feet in length from the tail to the top of the head; and when he holds up his head, it is 16 feet from the ground. He feeds principally on the leaves of trees; for, from the strange length of his fore-legs, he cannot graze, without dividing them to a vast distance. He kneels like a camel, when he would lie down.

2. The Alces, or Elk, has palmed horns, without any proper stem, and a fleety protuberance on the throat. The neck is much shorter than the head, with a short, thick, upright mane, of a light brown colour. The eyes are small; the ears a foot long, very broad and flouching; nostrils very large; the upper lip square, hangs greatly over the lower, and has a deep fulcus in the middle, so as to appear almost bifid. This is the largest animal of the deer kind. At the fair of St. Germain at Paris, in the year 1752, a female elk was exhibited as a show. It was caught in the year 1749, in a forest of Red Ruffia, belonging to a khan of Tartary. The height was six feet seven inches, the length ten feet, and the thickness eight. The hair was long, like that of a wild boar. The elk is a very swift animal; and he feeds upon leaves of alder, birch, willow, &c. When tamed, he devours large quantities of hay or bread. This animal is found in the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America. They live amidst the forests for the convenience of browsing the boughs of trees; for the great length of their legs, and the floutness of their neck, prevent them from grazing with any sort of ease. They often feed on water-plants, which they can readily get at by wading, and M. Sarasin says, they are so fond of the anagris festiva, or flinking bean-trefoil, as to dig for it with their feet, when covered with snow. They have a singular gait; their pace is a high flambing trot, but they go with vast swiftness. In old times these animals were made use of in Sweden to draw sledges; but as they were frequently necessary to the escape of murderers and other great criminals, the use was prohibited under very severe penalties. In padding through thick woods they carry their heads horizontally, to prevent their horns being entangled in the branches. In their common walk they raise their fore-feet very high; and will with great ease step over a rail a yard in height. They are offensive animals except when wounded, or in the rutting season, when they become very furious, and at that time swim from isle to isle in pursuit of the females. They strike with both horns and hoofs; are hunted in Canada during winter, when they sink to deep in the snow, as to become an easy prey. The flesh is much commended for being light and nourishing, but the nose is accounted the greatest delicacy in all Canada: the tongues are much esteemed, and are frequently brought here from Ruffia; the skin makes excellent buff-leather; Linnaeus says, it will turn a mutton-ball; the hair which is on the neck, withers, and lams of the full grown elk, is used in making mattress. It is very long, and very elastic. The hoofs were supposed to have great virtues in curing the epilepsy. It was pretended that the elk being subject to that disease, cured itself by scratching its ear with its hoof. The elk was known to the Romans by the name of Alice and Machlis; they believed that it had no joints in its legs; and, from the great size of the upper lip, imagined it could not feed without going backward as it grazed.

3. The Elaphus, or Stag, with long cylindrical ramified horns bent backwards. The colour of the stag is generally a reddish brown with some black about the face, and a black lift down the hinder part of the neck and between the shoulders. This animal is common to Europe, Barbary, the north of Asia, and America. Lives in herds: one male generally supreme in each herd. Furious and dangerous in rutting-time: feeds the female with a violent braying. Rutting season in August. Begins to shed its horns the latter end of February, or beginning of March: recovers them entirely by July. Fond of the sound of the pipe; will stand and listen attentively. The account of the cervus sanguis, or vast longevity of the stag, is fabulous. Hinds go with young above eight months; bring one at a time, seldom two; secure the young from the stag, who would destroy it. Flesh of these animals coarse and rank; skin useful for many purposes. The horns give name to the common volatile alkaline spirits sold in the shops for smelling to.

In Britain the stag is become less common than formerly; its excessive vicissitudes during the rutting season, and the badness of its flesh, induce most people to part with the species. Stags are still found wild in the Highlands of Scotland, in herds of four or five hundred together, ranging at full liberty over the vast hills of the north. Formerly the great Highland chieftains used to hunt with the magnificence of an eastern monarch, assembling four or five thousand of their clan, who drove the deer into the toils, or to the stations the lairds had placed themselves in: but as this pretence was frequently used to collect their vassals for rebellious purposes, an act was passed prohibiting any assemblies of this nature. Stags are likewise met with on the moors that border on Cornwall and Devonshire; and in Ireland on the mountains of Kerry, where they add greatly to the magnificence of the romantic scenery of the lake of Killarney. The stags of Ireland during its uncultivated state, and while it remained an almost boundless tract of forest, had an exact agreement in habit with those that range at present through the wilds of America. They were less in body, but very fat; and their horns of a size far superior to those of Europe, but in form agreed in all points.

4. The Tarandus, or Reindeer, is a native of Lapland, and the northern parts of Europe, Asia, and America. The horns are large, cylindrical, branched, and palmated at the tops. Two of the branches hang over the face. He is about the size of a buck, of a dirty whitish colour; the hairs of his skin are thick and

* See Plate fig. 4. To the Laplanders this animal is the substitute of the horse, the cow, the goat, and the sheep; and is their only wealth: the milk affords them cheese; the flesh, food; the skin, clothing; the tendons, bowstrings; and when split, thread; the horns, glue; the bones, spoons. During the winter it supplies the want of a horse, and draws their sledges with amazing swiftness over the frozen lakes and rivers, or over the snow, which at that time covers the whole country. A rich Laplander is possessed of a herd of 1000 rein-deer. In autumn they seek the highest hills, to avoid the Lapland galefly, which at that time deposits its eggs in their skin; it is the pest of these animals, and numbers die that are thus visited. The moment a single fly appears, the whole herd instantly perceives it; they fling up their heads, toss about their horns, and at once attempt to fly for shelter amidst the snows of the loftiest Alps. In summer they feed on several plants; but during winter on the rein-liverwort, which lies far beneath the snow, which they remove with their feet and palmated brow antlers, in order to get at their beloved food. They live only 16 years.

5. The Dama, Fallow-deer, or Buck and Doe; with horns branched, compressed, and palmated at the

† See Plate top †. The colour of this deer is various; reddish, deep brown, white, or spotted. Not so universal as the stag; rare in France and Germany. Found in Greece, the Holy Land, and the north of China. In great abundance in England; but, except on a few estates, confined in parks. None originally in America. They are easily tamed; and their flesh, which goes by the name of venison, is in high esteem among the luxurious: during mating-time they will contest with each other for their mistresses, but are less fierce than the stag; during that season, the male will form a hole in the ground, make the female lie down in it, and then often walk round and look at her. Moore speaks of a species found on the banks of the Gambia, in the interior parts of Africa, near Barracunda, called Tanacong, which he says differed not in form from the English fallow-deer; only that its size was equal to that of a small horse, and weighed 300 lb. It had also on its neck an erect black mane, four or five inches long.

6. The Capreolus, or Roe-buck; has erect, cylindrical, branched horns, and forked at the top. The roe-buck is the least of the deer kind; being only three feet nine inches long, two feet three inches high before, and two feet seven inches high behind; weight from 50 to 60 lb. Its make is very elegant, and formed for agility. They prefer a mountainous woody country to a plain one. They were formerly very common in Wales, in the north of England, and in Scotland; but at present the species nowhere exists in Great Britain, except in the Scottish highlands. In France they are more frequent; they are also found in Italy, Sweden, and Norway; and in Asia they are met with in Siberia. The first that are met with in Great Britain are in the woods on the south-side of Loch-Rannoch, in Perthshire: the last in those of Longwau, on the southern borders of Caithness; but they are most numerous in the beautiful forests of Invercauld, in the midst of the Grampian hills. They are unknown in Ireland. These animals do not keep in herds like other deer, but only in families; they bring two fawns at a time, which the female is obliged to conceal from the buck while they are very young. The flesh of this creature is reckoned a very delicate food. Wild roes, during summer, feed on grass; and are very fond of the rubus saxatilis, called in the Highlands the roe-buck berry; but in the winter-time, when the ground is covered with snow, they browse on the tender branches of the fir and birch.

7. The Guineen, about the size of a cat, is of a greyish colour, and black underneath. It is a native of Guinea, and the size and figure of its horns have not been hitherto described with any precision.

Cervus Velans, in natural history, a name given by authors to the stag-fly, or horned beetle, a very large species of beetle with horns sloped, and something like those of the stag.