92 FAUNA OF SHROPSHIRE. 



look on as if in mute admiration all these are depicted 

 with entire faithfulness to nature, yet with the additional 

 charm of true artistic interpretation. Little need be 

 added here on the natural history of the Red Deer, but 

 there is one point which deserves more than passing 

 mention the growth and annual shedding of the antlers. 

 Very few facts in Natural History are so intrinsically 

 wonderful as this. We are so familiar with it that it 

 has ceased to excite surprise, but if the Deer were un- 

 known to us, and a traveller came from a far country 

 bringing a pair of horns weighing fifty pounds, and 

 stated that the animal that bore them shed them every 

 spring, and grew a new pair in the course of a few weeks, 

 we should probably receive the statement with incredu- 

 lity. The growth of the antlers is extremely rapid, and 

 each year another point is added and the size slightly 

 increased. At first only a slight protuberance or knob 

 is visible, covered with velvety skin : this feels hot to 

 the touch and there is an inflammatory action going on 

 beneath it which deposits bony matter continuously : the 

 antler keeps rapidly lengthening, still covered with the 

 "velvet," till it attains its due size; and then a thickened 

 bony ring is formed round the base of each antler, chok- 

 ing the arteries there and so cutting off the supply of 

 blood. The skin on the antlers now dries up and 

 shrivels, adhering to them in shreds, till rubbed off by 

 the stag. The antlers are shed about March, the 

 immediate cause of their breaking off being absorption 

 of bone which takes place at the point where they are 

 attached to the skull. The hind has no antlers. The 

 pairing season (at which time the stag is a dangerous 

 animal), is in September or October, and the fawn, 



