Pere Davids deer

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Kidnapped and Catriona, a novel and its sequel by R. L. Stevenson, published in 1886 and 1893.

The central incident in the story is the murder of Colin Campbell, the ‘Red Fox’ of Glenure, the king's factor on the forfeited estate of Ardshiel: this is a historical event. The young David Balfour, left in poverty on the death of his father, goes for assistance to his uncle Ebenezer, a miserly old villain who has illegally taken control of the Balfour estate. Having failed to effect the death of David, Ebenezer has him kidnapped on a ship to be carried off to the Carolinas. On the voyage Alan Breck is picked up from a sinking boat. He is a Jacobite who ‘wearies for the heather and the deer’. The ship is wrecked on the coast of Mull, and David and Alan journey together. They are witnesses of the murder of Colin Campbell, and suspicion falls on them. After a perilous journey across the Highlands they escape across the Forth, and the first novel ends with the discomfiture of Ebenezer and David's recovery of his rights.

Catriona is principally occupied with the unsuccessful attempt of David Balfour to secure, at the risk of his own life and freedom, the acquittal of James Stewart of the Glens, who is falsely accused, from political motives, of the murder of Colin Campbell; with the escape of Alan Breck to the Continent; and with David's love affair with Catriona Drummond, the daughter of the renegade James More.

Père David's deer , Asian deer, Elaphurus davidianus, known only in a semidomesticated state. It has a bulky, donkeylike body, reaching a shoulder height of nearly 4 ft (120 cm), with a tufted tail longer than that of any other deer. It is tawny red with white underparts and a white ring around each eye. Its hooves are very broad. It has curious antlers, with irregularly branching front prongs and usually straight posterior prongs. The antlers may reach 3 ft (90 cm) in length. E. davidianus came to the attention of Westerners in 1865, when it was observed by the missionary Père Armand David in the gardens of the Chinese emperor, near Beijing. Several specimens were sent to Europe, where they flourished in captivity; those remaining in China all perished during the Boxer Uprising. After World War II, breeding stock from England was distributed to the world's zoos, and in 1960 the species was reestablished in China. The natural habitat of this deer is unknown, but it is believed to have inhabited the swampy plains of China until it was displaced by agriculture. It is classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Artiodactyla, family Cervidae.

Bibliography: See B. Beck and C. Wemmer, The Management and Biology of an Extinct Species: Père David's Deer (1983).