Hodgson regarded the Nepal form as distinct, having described it as Stylocerus
rutwa, and Sundevall adopted this opinion, bnt separated another from the same
locality under the name of JProx stylocerus. This latter naturalist also considered
the Central and Southern Indian barking-deer as a distinct species, and identified
it with the Prox albipes, Wagner. This latter race Sykes had considered as C.
mtmtjac, and more lately Gray re-named it under the designation of C. tamulicus.
I have examined the types of Stylocerus rutwa and C. tamulicus, hut I cannot
detect that they differ specifically from Cervulus mtmtjac of other parts of India,
and the specific name applied by Sundevall to the Malabar race seems to indicate
that it also is the same. They appear to me to he only local races of one widely
distributed species which ranges over the Himalaya, India, and Ceylon through
Arraean and Burma to the Malayan peninsula, Sumatra, and Java, spreading from
the Himalaya eastwards to the seaboard of China, and, according to Swinhoe,
stretching to the Island of Hainan, where, he says, C. reevesn, Ogilby, is replaced
by the allied Indian form. *
The skull of the Sumatran barking-deer figured by Marsden' C. mtmtjac, and
which has for many years been deposited in the Museum of the B-oyal College of
Surgeons, London (No. 3615), was described by Blainville as the type of his species
Cervus moschatus.* The only difference that can be detected, as is stated in the
Catalogue of the Museum,3 is that the external ridge of the malar hone is thicker
and more prominent than in Indian specimens of C. mtmtjac.
Cervulus curvostylis, Gray, is founded on a deformed pair of horns. The
pedicle of each horn is abruptly bent downwards, backwards, and outwards at
its origin, and the upper surface of the head is somewhat roughened. The
pedicles of the horn are otherwise well developed, and the abnormality is akin to that
downward bending and twisting of the horn which is occasionally observable in
the Indian and in the Persian gazelles. The cheek-pit does not seem to he larger
than in ordinary examples of the species.
I t would appear that the real characters of the Chinese barking-deer C. reevesn,
Ogilby, are not rightly understood, because Ogilby, who first described the
animal, remarks that it is about the same size as the Indian mtmtjac, while
other and more recent observers have recorded that it is nearly one-third smaller
than the latter. A comparison of adult skulls of the species certainly confirms
this opinion. The adult male skull of C. reevesn in the British Museum
has its extreme length only 5'75 as compared with 8‘25 inches, which are the
dimensions of C. mtmtjac in the same collection. The nearly allied Chinese
barking-deer, the C. lacrymcms, A. M.-Edwards, the skull of which I have compared
with the type of C. sclateri, Swinhoe, and with which it perfectly agrees,
is seemingly also a larger animal than C. reevesn, the skull probably attaining to .
7 inches in length; the largest specimen in the British Museum, which is not fully
1 Hist, of Sumatra, Atlas, pi. xiii. No. 2: No. 1, skull; pi. sav. No. 2, animal.
1 Nouv. Bull, do la Soc. Phil. 1816, p. 77.
* Cat. Mus. Royal Coll. Surgeons, Lond. vol. ii. 1863, p. 698, No. 3616.
adult, being 660 inches in extreme length. These two Chinese species, therefore,
are considerably smaller than 0. mwntjac, with which these skulls can merer
be -««toiinOcd, and I shall therefore only indicate wherein these two nearly allied
barking-deer differ from eaoh other m the cranial characters. The skull of C.
reevesn, Ogilby, is distinguished from that of C. lacrymam, A. M.-Edwards, by its
greater breadth and shortness, these characters being also distinctive of the muzzle
of the animal as compared with that of 0. laerymams, which is also easily recognised,
as pointed out by A. M.-Edwards, by the great size of its lachrymal fossa, which
nearly equals the diameter of the orbit.» The shortness of the muzzle chiefly
depends on the less forward extension of the premaxillaries of O. reevesn, which so
affects the. length of the premaxillary foramen that that opening in O. laerymans
is one-third longer than in 0, reevesii; of course it is also shown in the relative
palatal lengths of the premaxillaries, which, when compared with the transverse
breadth of the interspace between the canines and the premolars, brings out the
distinctive features of the two skulls in these respects. In O. lacrymam the palatal
length of the premaxillaries is considerably in excess of the breadth across the
foregoing edentulous interspace, whereas in O. reevesn it falls short of the latter
measurement. The form of the palatal surface, between the canines and premolars,
is evidently liable to variation in 0. laerymams, as the breadth of the interspace
between the curved ridges that run from the premolars to the canines is broader m
the skull depicted by A. M.-Edwards than in the type of C. sclateri, while m other
respect® the skulls are identical and in no way separable specifically. In 0. reevesn,
on the other hand, this interspace is always broader than in 0. laerymamsThe
greater breadth of the skull of the former is due to the more outward shelving of,
the external supra-alveolar portion of the maxilla. In O. reevesn the transverse
breadth of this region of the skull is considerably in excess of the width across
the base of the skull opposite to the middle of the articular surface of the squamous,
while in C. laerymams that measurement only equals the latter. The preorbital
fossa, besides being not so large or rounded in O. reevesii asm C. laerymams,
has the upper border formed by the lachrymal sharp and narrow, instead of being
broad and flattened as in O’, laerymams.
I observe that there is occasionally an indication of tine-like processes on the
sides of the pedicles, and there is an example of this kind in the British Museum
in an adult skull of C. mtmtjac, in which a homy rosette, with a constricted osseous -
base, buds from the outside of one pedicle. The rugosities on the curve of the
pedicles of the deformed skull described by Dr. Gray as C. curvostylis are akin to
' these growths.
C. laerymans and other barking-deer have generally no trace of the blank band
on the nape which occurs in O. reevesii, but I observe in one specimen of C. nrnnt-
jac from Nepal a faint indication of such a line.
i Dr. Gray, in tin Ann. and Mag. Nat. H is t 1873, yol rii. p. 435, «mar ts that “ an alteration in the size of the
tear-pit is oh.e,cable in the old and young of 0. sclateri, in which the «dolt ha. the tearpit ■rery ilk, that of C. reevau,
but larger, more cirenlar, and deeper; bnt in the young of this species the p it is distinct, but more oblong and com-
paratively shallow, especially in the upper part.”