ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEER 111 



remainder of the continent. On the other hand, there is living 

 in Europe and Asia at the present time a genus of deer 

 (Capreolus) which has several important characters in 

 common with Odocoileus and its more primitive South 

 American relations. The genus Capreolus, which includes 

 the roedeer, is distinguished from all the other Old World 

 deer in its tele-metacarpal front limbs, that is to say in the 

 possession of the lower remnants of the lateral metacarpal 

 bones. It resembles, as we already know, in this character 

 the true American deer. Moreover, as Mr. Eorig * has 

 pointed out, this is not the only feature of resemblance be- 

 tween Capreolus and Odocoileus. The antlers of the former 

 likewise agree with those of the New World deer, rather than 

 with those of the Old World. Capreolus has the backwardly 

 directed tine of Odocoileus, and lacks the brow tine of Cervus. 

 Even in the period of renewal of the antlers, the roedeier 

 agrees with the American deer, this change taking place in 

 the winter months, while it occurs in all the other Old World 

 deer in the spring and summer. Only three kinds of roedeer 

 exist at present. In Miocene and Pliocene times, however, 

 France and Germany were tenanted by quite a large 

 assemblage of tele-metacarpal deer, all of which lacked the 

 brow tine like Capreolus. The earlier history of these deer 

 is largely obscured by the circumstance that only fragmen- 

 tary parts of the skeleton are known. Thus the Miocene 

 species of Dicrocerus, which is supposed to be related to the 

 living Cervulus, possessed antlers that can be almost matched 

 by some of the recent South American mountain forms of 

 Odocoileus, whereas other South American forms (Blasto- 

 cerus) remind, one of the modern roebuck, f 



I venture to think that all the deer of South America have 

 originated from one or more ancestors which invaded that 

 continent direct from western Europe in early Tertiary times. 

 Although it is true that we possess little palaeontological evi- 

 dence in support of such a theory, a land connection must 

 then have joined Europe with South America. The prob- 

 able period of this migration from Europe to South America, 



* Eorig, Ad., " Wachstum des Geweihes," p. 424. 



t Rorig, Ad., " Phylogeuie des Cervideugeweihee," p. 542. 



