The Stag's Antt^ers 129 



out of proportion. What is disease in one animal may 

 be regularized in another. Everyone admits the affin- 

 ity of the lunatic, the lover, and the poet. What is 

 normal at one time of life may be pathological at 

 another. Disease-changes and health-changes are not 

 so far apart as they seem at first sight ; and Virchow's 

 optimism of pathology was that the new departures 

 which turn out to be disharmonious or even destruc- 

 tive are arrows that miss the target. They are not 

 unnaturally associated with that vigorous organic 

 archery which we call variability. Plus implies minus, 

 the saint the sinner, and progressive evolution the 

 possibility of the pathological. In wild nature, how- 

 ever, the radically disharmonious very rarely comes 

 and never comes to stay ! 



The late Sir William MacEwen, in his suggestive 

 study of the antlers of deer, pointed out that the 

 multiplication of cells that leads to these extraor- 

 dinary structures — as transient as they are exuberant 

 — was comparable to that seen in a rapidly growing 

 tumor. The yearly production of the stag's antlers 

 is like a semi-pathological process that has become 

 more or less normalized. Not less striking is the 

 method by which the annual shedding of the antlers 

 is effected. There is a dying away or necrosis of the 

 bone which would be pathological elsewhere. As 

 Virchow would have said, here in the stag are two 

 pathological variations which have been brought into 

 harmony with health. 



At the breeding season the male stickleback bends 

 pieces of seaweed or fresh-water plants into a nest. 



