[Footnote 1: PROFESSOR OWEN has noticed a similar fact regarding the rudiments of the second and fifth digits in the instance of the elk and bison, which have them largely expanded where they inhabit swampy ground; whilst they are nearly obliterated in the camel and dromedary, that traverse arid deserts.--OWEN _on Limbs_, p. 34; see also BELL _on the Hand_, ch. iii.] The buffalo, like the elk, is sometimes found in Ceylon as an albino, with purely white hair and a pink iris. _Deer_.--"Deer," says the truthful old chronicler, Robert Knox, "are in great abundance in the woods, from the largeness of a cow to the smallness of a hare, for here is a creature in this land no bigger than the latter, though every part rightly resembleth a deer: it is called _meminna_, of a grey colour, with white spots and good meat."[1] The little creature which thus dwelt in the recollection of the old man, as one of the memorials of his long captivity, is the small "musk deer"[2] so called in India, although neither sex is provided with a musk-bag. The Europeans in Ceylon know it by the name of the "moose deer;" and in all probability the terms _musk_ and _moose_ are both corruptions of the Dutch word "_muis_," or "mouse" deer, a name particularly applicable to the timid and crouching attitudes and aspect of this beautiful little creature. Its extreme length never reaches two feet; and of those which were domesticated about my house, few exceeded ten inches in height, their graceful limbs being of proportionate delicacy. It possesses long and extremely large tusks, with which it can inflict a severe bite. The interpreter moodliar of Negombo had a _milk white_ meminna in 1847, which he designed to send home as an acceptable present to Her Majesty, but it was unfortunately killed by an accident.[3] [Footnote 1: KNOX'S _Relation, &c._, book i. c. 6.] [Footnote 2: Moschus meminna.] [Footnote 3: When the English look possession of Kandy, in 1803, they found "five beautiful milk-white deer in the palace, which was noted as a very extraordinary thing."--_Letter_ in Appendix to PERCIVAL'S _Ceylon_, p. 428. The writer does not say of what species they were.] [Illustration: "MOOSE" DEER (MOSCHUS MEMINNA)]