Mrs. Loudon's Entertaining Naturalist: Being popular descriptions, tales, and anecdotes of more than Five Hundred Animals.Loudon, Mrs. (Jane)
General
Mrs. Loudon's Entertaining Naturalist: Being popular descriptions, tales, and anecdotes of more than Five Hundred Animals.
Loudon, Mrs. (Jane)
Animals -- Juvenile literature; Zoology -- Juvenile literature
THESE are the Deer now usually kept in our parks. The beautifully
spotted kind are said to have been brought from Bengal, and the very
deep brown from Norway by King James I. Their horns are broad and flat;
the male is called a buck, the female a doe, and the young one a fawn.
The buck casts his horns every spring, and they increase in size
annually till he has attained his fifth year. The venison of this Deer
is very far superior to that of the red deer, which is coarse and tough.
The buck-skin and doe-skin are well known, as furnishing a peculiarly
soft and warm leather, which is used for gloves, gaiters, &c. The horns
are used for the handles of knives, &c., like those of the stag; and the
refuse is, in the like manner, used in the manufacture of ammonia. The
buck stands about three feet high, and measures about five feet in
length; the doe is somewhat smaller. The tail is much longer than either
that of the stag or the roebuck, being nearly seven inches and a half
long.
[Illustration: THE ELK, (_Cervus Alces_,)]
IS the largest of all the Deer kind. The antlers, at first simple, and
then divided into narrow slips, assume in the fifth year the form of a
triangular blade, dentated on the external edge and very thick at the
base; they increase with age, till they weigh fifty or sixty pounds, and
have fourteen branches to each horn. The Elk lives in forests, feeding
upon branches and sprouts of trees, and inhabits Europe, Asia, and
America; in the last-named country he is known by the name of the Moose
Deer. There is very little difference between the European Elk and the
American Moose Deer, though they are larger in the New World than with
us, owing perhaps to the extensive forests in which they range. In all
places, however, they are timorous and gentle; content with their
pasture, and never willing to disturb any other animal. The pace of the
Elk is a high, shambling trot, but it runs with great swiftness.
Formerly these animals were made use of in Sweden to draw sledges, but
their swiftness gave criminals such means of escape, that this
employment of them was prohibited under great penalties. The female is
less than the male, and has no horns.
[Illustration: THE REIN-DEER, (_Cervus Tarandus_, or _Rangifer
Tarandus_,)]
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