184 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 189!. 



ON ABNORMAL HORNS OF THE INDIAN ANTELOPE, 

 WITH SOME REMARKS ON THEIR PROBABLE CAUSES. 



By A. W. Morris, F.Z.S. 

 ( With a plate.} 



Perhaps no group of animals lias puzzled and perplexed the 

 systematic zoologist more than the Ruminantia, and the splitting 

 up of the tribe into subordinate types has proved no easy task even 

 to the best classifiers. 



The horns have been relied upon almost exclusively by some writers 

 on the subject as affording the best means of separating the different 

 families, while others, again, have based their arrangement on various 

 points of structure as supplying important characters for the division. 



Although the ox and deer tribes may be said to have taxed the 

 ability of classifiers thus severely, the antelopes, however, with a few 

 exceptions, do not appear to have given the same amount of trouble 

 in their arrangement, the shape of the horns having been taken as 

 supplying important and well-marked character for their separation 

 from the rest of the Ungulata of which they form a sub -tribe. 



Resembling the deer in many respects, they are yet abundantly 

 distinct from these animals, and may readily be distinguished from 

 them by the character of the horns, which are hollow at the base, 

 set on solid bony cores like those of the ox and permanently retained, 

 whereas among the deer they are periodically shed and renewed, 

 a stag in "velvet" being a familiar example of this process. Their 

 shape is usually "lyrate" or conical and set above the eyebrows, 

 which is one of the important distinguishing characters, and never 

 misshapen or distorted, as is so often the case with many of the 

 other members of the family, so that any obvious departure from the 

 normal growth must be considered as abnormal, and as such deserves 

 to be noted and recorded. 



From being permanent and not deciduous, it stands to reason 

 that any particular direction they may assume cannot at a subsequent 

 period be modified or altered to the usual shape, so that as they are 

 influenced at the start, so must they remain for all time. The cause or 

 sit of causes, however, that operates in this way and gives rise to 



