198 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP [1885. 



though the perfect preservation and freshness of the bones in the 

 Princeton skeleton make it hard to believe that they are more 

 than a few years old. 



In all probability the habits of the animal, and to a great 

 degree its appearance, were those of the moose. Its short neck 

 shows that it would have great difficulty in grazing, and so prob- 

 ably lived by browsing upon shrubs and trees. This was aided, 

 no doubt, by a more or less prehensile upper lip, which the char- 

 acter of the nasal opening shows to have been more proboscis- 

 like than in the deer, though far less so than in the moose. 



Morphologically the fossil is of interest for the light which it 

 seems to throw upon the question of the origin of the genus 

 Alces, and its relations to the typical deer. Sir Victor Brooke 

 and Prof. Garrod have shown that the Cervidee may be subdivided 

 into great groups according to the characters of the skull and 

 fore-feet. According to the latter we have the Plesio- and Tele- 

 metacarpi, or those which retain the proximal and distal ends of 

 the metacarpals respectively. With one exception, Cervus cana- 

 densis, all American deer are Telemetacarpi, while nearly all of 

 the Old World deer are Plesiometacarpi. Those of circumpolar 

 range, the reindeer and moose, are both Telemetacarpi. Another 

 distinction is found in the structure of the skull. In one division, 

 the American deer (except G. canadensis), the vomer reaches the 

 palatines and projects beyond them, dividing the posterior nares 

 into two. The Old World deer have a vomer that does not reach 

 the palatines, and the posterior nares are not divided. In Alces 

 we have the latter type of skull. 



The chief differences between the true Gervus and Alces are as 

 follows : (1) The former is plesio-, the latter tele-metacarpal, both 

 agreeing in the structure of the nasal passages. (2) Gervus has 

 cylindrical antlers, with brow- and bez-tines rising abruptly from 

 long pedicels. Alces has palmated antlers, without brow- or bez- 

 tines, the beam directed horizontally from the short pedicels. (3) 

 In Alces the nasals are very short, the anterior nares of great 

 extent; in Cervus the nasals are long, and the anterior nares 

 small. (4) In Alces the premaxillse are imbedded in a groove of 

 the maxilla', and do not reach the nasals; in Cervus they lie 

 external to the maxillae, and (in some species at least) do reach 

 the nasal. (5) In Alces there is a deep notch on the supra- 



