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)]

Ceylon Elk.—­In the mountains, the Ceylon elk[1], which reminds one of the red deer of Scotland, attains the height of four or five feet; it abounds in all shady places that are intersected by rivers; where, though its chase affords an endless resource to the sportsman, its venison scarcely equals in quality the inferior beef of the lowland ox.  In the glades and park-like openings that diversify the great forests of the interior, the spotted Axis troops in herds as numerous as the fallow deer in England:  but, in journeys through the jungle, when often dependent on the guns of our party for the precarious supply of the table, we found the flesh of the Axis[2] and the Muntjac[3] a sorry substitute for that of the pea-fowl, the jungle-cock, and flamingo.  The occurrence of albinos is very frequent in troops of the axis.  Deer’s horns are an article of export from Ceylon, and considerable quantities are annually sent to the United Kingdom.

[Footnote 1:  Rusa Aristotelis.  Dr. GRAY has lately shown that this is the great axis of Cuvier.—­Oss.  Foss. 502. t. 39; f. 10:  The Singhalese, on following the elk, frequently effect their approaches by so imitating the call of the animal as to induce them to respond.  An instance occurred during my residence in Ceylon, in which two natives, whose mimicry had mutually deceived them, crept so close together in the jungle that one shot the other, supposing the cry to proceed from the game.]

[Footnote 2:  Axis maculata, H.  Smith.]