ed 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)]

_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