226 



THE DEER OF AMERICA. 



usually at maturity shows three tines, and frequently four, and 

 the abnormal growth which develops many points is of more 

 frequent occurrence than here. Hence interlocked antlers are 

 more frequently met with there than here. We see, then, that 

 the popular notion that the age of the deer may be determined 

 by the number of prongs on his antlers is a popular error. 



Abnormal Antlers of Comnf-,on Deer. 



I ought not to close this part of my subject without referring 

 to three fossil antlers in my collection, found in the lower drift in 

 the valley of the Fox Kiver, near Ottawa, Illinois. Here has 

 been an upheaval which elevated the coal measures, and exposed 

 all to the action of the great currents which sweep soutlnvard, 

 and which carried away everything, down to the St. Peter's sand- 

 stone, except in a few places where, for a few hundred acres, 

 the lower vein of coal remains. Over this sometimes a portion 

 of the soapstone remains, and in others it is gone. Where these 

 fossils were found, about two feet of the soapstone remained in 

 place over the coal ; the deep furrows on the top of which show 

 plainly the glacial action, or rather the plowings of the icebergs, 

 which drifted down with the great current and grounded two or 

 three miles lower down, where the extent and forms of many may 

 now be seen and traced, by the clusters of great bowlders which 

 they left when they melted away, as plainly as if marked on a 

 map. After this denudation there was deposited a stratum of 

 gravel six inches thick and above that, more than sixteen feet 

 first of sand and gravel, then sand, then sand and clay, then clay, 

 and lastly, surface loam. In this lowest stratum of gravel, which 



