American Big Game in its Haunts 



the case of the Indian sambur deer, of which there 

 is evidence from such authority as that king of 

 sportsmen, Sir Samuel Baker, and others, that the 

 shedding does not always occur at the same season, 

 nor is it always annual in the same buck; and by 

 Pere David's deer, which has been known to shed 

 twice in one year. 



When resemblances such as those of the prong- 

 horn are so promiscuously distributed, the task of 

 fixing their values in estimating affinities is not a 

 light one, and in fact the most rational conclusion 

 which we may draw from them is that they point 

 back to a distant and generalized ancestor, who 

 possessed them all, but that in the distribution of 

 his physical estate, so to speak, these heirlooms 

 have not come down alike to all descendants. 

 There is again a complicating possibility that some 

 may be no more than adaptive or analogous char- 

 acters, similarly produced under like conditions of 

 life, but quite independent of a common origin, 

 and it is seldom that we know enough of the his- 

 tory of development of any species to conclude with 

 certainty whether or not this has been the case. At 

 all events, the prong-buck is quite alone in the 

 world at present, and we know no fossils which 

 unmistakably point to it, although it has been sup- 

 posed that some of the later Miocene species of 



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