XIIl] 



OF THE ANTLEKS OF DEER 



629 



but in the antler, on the other hand, no such restraint is imposed, 

 and the living, growing fabric of bone may expand into a broad 

 flattened plate over which the blood-vessels run. In the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the main blood-vessels growth will be most 

 active : in the interspaces between, it may wholly fail : with the 

 result that we may have great notches cut out of the flattened 

 plate, or may at length find it reduced to the form of a simple 

 branching structure. The main point, as it seems to me, is that 

 the "horn" is essentially an axial rod, while the "antler" is 

 essentially an outspread surface"^. In other words, I believe that 



Fig. 323. Antlers of Swedish Elk. (After Lonnberg, from P.Z.S. 



the whole configuration of an antler is more easily understood by 

 conceiving it as a plate or a surface, more and more notched and 

 scolloped till but a slender skeleton may remain, than to look 

 upon it the other way, namely as an axial stem (or beam) giving 



* The fact that in one very small deer, the little South American Coassus, the 

 antler is reduced to a simple short spike, does not preclude the general distinction 

 which I have drawn. In Coassus we have the beginnings of an antler, which has 

 not yet manifested its tendency to expand ; and in the many alUed species of the 

 American genus Cariacus, we find the expansion manifested in various simple 

 modes of ramification or bifurcation. (Cf. Sir V. Brooke, Classification of the 

 Cervidae, p. 897.) 



