THE ANTLERS. 175 



terference and knocking together of the deers' antlers when they 

 should be harnessed in couples, one horn was relentlessly chopped 

 off close to the head by a native armed with a heavy sword-like 

 knife, leaving a red ghastly stump, from which the blood trickled 

 in little streams over the animals' ears." If he had had tlie ant- 

 lers sawed off instead of chopped off' with a heavy knife, I shoukl 

 have liked it better and so probably would the deer, for if those 

 antlers were as hard as ordinary deer's antlers, it must have been 

 a very difficult as well as a very cruel task to chop them off with 

 anything. The deer were perhaps castrated, though imperfectly, 

 which would render the antler less dense with a more active 

 arterial system than in perfect animals ; but certain it is that the 

 antlers were well matured, for our author tells us just before that 

 the deer were caught by thr-owing a lasso over the antlers of the 

 deer, which made " tremendous leaps and frantic efforts to es- 

 cape," to have borne which the antlers must have been pretty 

 well matured, hard, and strong. This was in November, near the 

 Arctic Circle, when on the full bucks, at least, the antlers must 

 have been in their prime. However, making every allowance for 

 inaccurate observations arising from want of appreciation of the 

 importance of what he saw, we may safely conclude, that when 

 the strong and pretty well matured antler was severed near the 

 head, there was a discharge of blood at least sufficiently copious 

 to drop down upon the ears. This is much more tlian I hafe 

 ever observed. 



But all antlers do not show equal solidity at the time they are 

 dropped in the course of nature, and it is very uncommon to find 

 one that is quite solid throughout. Usually towards the lower 

 end and indeed for the greatest portion of it, and even extending 

 into the tines, a part of the interior is more or less porous when 

 the internal growth ceases, the antler dies and is thrown off. 

 This internal growth is arrested before sufficient earthy matter 

 has been deposited to fill up the interstices in the cancellous tissue 

 and render the antler solid throughout. The result is that the 

 antler, instead of being solid has an open interior of greater or 

 less extent, which, however, is braced in every direction by thin 

 plates of bone, leaving the antler lighter, more elastic, and per- 

 haps as strong as if the solidification had extended thoughout. 

 This arrest of the solidifying process, before all the pores liad 

 been filled up with earthy matter, results from the extreme solidi- 

 fication of a thin plate at the lower extremity of the antler, which 

 is in actual contact with the pedicel, and through which the in- 



