All About The Deer:
Story Of The Deer
Deer Of The Philippines
( Originally Published Early 1900's )
In the Himalaya Mountains is found the musk deer, a clumsily built animal standing about 20 inches at the shoulder, with peculiarly coarse, brittle, and rather long hair, somewhat resembling pith. This deer has no antlers. All the limbs are of considerable length, and the hinder pair are longer than the front ones. The ears are very large and the tail is short, terminating in the male in a tuft, but hairy throughout in the female. The male has a peculiar sac-like gland in the skin of the abdomen, which yields the musk of commerce. The general color of the fur is a rich dark brown, more or less speckled and mottled with gray and tawny; the individual hairs having black tips, beneath which is a ring of white, while for three-quarters of their length they are white at the base. The chin, the inner borders of the ears and the inside of the thighs, and not unfrequently a spot on each side of the throat, are whitish, while the under-parts and the inner surfaces of the limbs are paler than the body. Some individuals are, however, considerably paler than ordinary, while in others there is a more or less marked yellowish tint; and others, again, are blacker. The young are spotted.
The musk-deer utter a kind of hiss when alarmed, and when captured they give vent to a series of screams ; with these exceptions they appear to be silent, even in the pairing-season.