234 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



perate Europe and Asia, the red-deer is much 

 more of a forest than a hill animal, and in the 

 past it ranged over the whole of the British Isles. 

 It happens that the less valuable ground to which 

 it is now (putting parka aside) almost confined 

 is the most markedly deficient in the plant life 

 and mineral constituents necessary for the forma- 

 tion of bone. That deficiency does not affect 

 carnivorous animals, or, indeed, animals on which 

 the bone -making demands are normal, but those 

 of the stag are abnormal in a high degree. A 

 full-grown stag sometimes carries .twelve or thir- 

 teen pounds of bone on its head (the forest deer 

 of Europe carry much more). The massing of 

 bony material here is not to be compared with 

 that on the brow of the Cape buffalo, but the 

 buffalo does not cast its horns from year to year. 

 It adds continually to their size. The red deer, 

 on the other hand a much smaller animal builds 

 up a new set every summer, so that a fourteen - 

 pointer, presumably fourteen years old, might in 

 the course of his life have produced and cast 

 away as much as a hundred pounds of bone. How 

 the vast expenditure is sustained is a puzzle. 



The scarcity of lime and salts, the materials of 

 which bone is formed, is believed to account for 

 some curious deer forest phenomena. Many 

 thousands of antlers are cast in the Highlands 

 every year, but it is rare indeed for a set to be 

 found. Keepers occasionally find a set, but those 

 found do not represent one in a hundred of those 

 shed. What becomes of them? There is no doubt 

 whatever that they are eaten by the deer them- 



