26 THE ANTELOPE OF AMERICA. 



to the men at the fort by knocking off the bony part of the horn 

 and showhig the hard spongy membrane beneath, well attached 

 to the skull, and perfectly immovable." 



The hunters were right, and the scientists were wrong ; but 

 we see how near Mr. Audubon came to discovering the truth, 

 and had he been a little more patient in his investigations, and a 

 little less wedded to preconceived opinions, he would have had 

 the honor of this important discovery. But that was reserved 

 to others. 



Some years later, on the 10th of April, 1828, Dr. C. A. Can- 

 field, of Monterey, California, in a paper which he sent to Pro- 

 fessor Baird of the Smithsonian Institute, communicated many 

 new and interesting facts concerning the physiology and habits 

 of this animal ; and, among others, the surprising announcement 

 that although it has a hollow horn, like the ox, yet this horn is 

 cast off and renewed annually. This statement by Dr. Canfield 

 was considered by Professor Baird so contradictory to all zoolog- 

 ical laws, which had been considered well established by ob- 

 served facts, that he did not venture to publish it, till the same 

 fact was further attested by Mr. Bartlett, superintendent of the 

 gardens of the Zoological Society of London, who, in 1855, re- 

 peated the fact in a paper published in the Proceedings of that 

 societ}^ In the February following, the paper which Dr. Can- 

 field, eight 3'ears before, had furnished the Smithsonian Institute, 

 containing the first well attested account of the interesting fact, 

 was published in the Proceedings of that society. 



At the time I gave an account of Mr. Bartlett's observation, 

 in a paper which I read before the Ottawa Academy of Natural 

 Sciences in 1868, and which was published by that society, I was 

 not aware that the same fact had been previously communicated 

 by Dr. Canfield to Professor Baird, else I should have taken pleas- 

 ure in mentioning it. 



This animal has a deciduous hollow horn, which envelopes a 

 persistent core, which is a process of the skull like the core of the 

 persistent horns of other ruminants. This shell is true horn, 

 and, as we shall presently see, has the same general system of 

 growth as other horns, although it is cast annually like the 

 antlers of the deer, and so reveals to us an intei-mediate link be- 

 tween those ruminants which have persistent and those which 

 have deciduous corneous appendages. Only the lower part of this 

 horn is hollow, the core extending up scarcel_y half its length. 

 When the horn is matured, the portion above the core is round 



