OF THE HOLLOW-HORNED RUMINANTS. 57 



has the antlers growing like fingers from its circumference. Colonel Snnith' supposes 

 that this palmated formation may be intended by Nature to enable the Elk and Rein- 

 deer to shovel away the snow from the mosses upon which they feed in high northern 

 latitudes ; but besides the difficulty of conceiving how the palmated part could be brought 

 to bear for such a purpose, it is to be observed, that the formation is neither common to 

 all the boreal species nor peculiar to the polar regions. The Wapiti, which inhabits the 

 same territories as the Elk, has round horns like the common Stag ; the Reindeer, though 

 living much further north, where the snow lies all the year round, has the palmature 

 much smaller than the Elk ; and finally the Fallow Deer, as its allied fossil congeners 

 did before it, inhabits temperate climates, where snow seldom lies above a month or six 

 weeks at a time. Upon the whole, therefore, there appears no good reason to suj)pose 

 that the habits and characters of ruminating animals are in any degree influenced by 

 the mere form and figure, any more than by the number of their horns ; I shall conse- 

 quently neglect these circumstances altogether in considering the generic characters of 

 the Ruminants ; and though in so doing I am opposed to the practice of many distin- 

 guished zoologists, 1 venture to hope that the observations which have just been oftered 

 will fully justify my dissent. (3.) The directions, curvatures and flexures of the horns are 

 likewise of many different kinds and degrees. Sometimes they are perfectly straight 

 and annulated, as in the Gemsbok ; or straight and surrounded with a spiral wreath, as 

 in the Canna (Oreas) ; sometimes they have a single curvature, either backwards, as in 

 the Goats and greater number of the Oryxes, or forwards, as in the Reitbok and some 

 others, or inwards like a crescent, as in the common Ox and Sassaby ; sometimes they 

 are lyrated, or have a double curvature in the same plane, first backwards and then for- 

 wards at the point, which is more or less the case with all the Gazelles, and a consider- 

 able number of my new genus Calliope ; and finally, they have frequently a spiral cur- 

 vature in different planes, either horizontal and sideways, as in the Sheep, or vertically 

 upwards, as in the Indian Antelope, the Addax, the Koodoo, the Boshbok, and their allied 

 species. In this last, or spiral form of the horn, it is to be observed that the Sheep 

 differ from the Antelopes, except the Bubalus and Caama, in which, however, the charac- 

 ter is but partially developed, by having the horns twisted in the contrary direction, as 

 observed by M. Agassiz. Not that the rule is altogether so simple as that eminent 

 naturalist laid it down, on the occasion before alluded to, viz. that the spiral runs from 

 left to right in the Antelopes, and from right to left in the Sheep, which is true only of 

 the left horn, the curvature of the right being in both cases turned in the opposite direc- 

 tion respectively ; so that the right horn of the Antelope is twisted in the same direction 

 as the left horn of the Sheep, and vice versd. 



Now all these various flexures and bendings of the horns, as well as their number, 

 form and direction, have no assignable relation to the habits and oeconomy of animal 



• Griff. Anim. King., iv. 75, 84. 

 VOL III. — PART I. I 



