366 SPORTING ADVENTURES IN THE FAR WEST. 



niche to itself, and it now seems to be accepted as the con- 

 necting link between the Cervidce and the Capridce — an- 

 other proof that Nature abhors a vacuum. 



The male, when born, has protuberances where the horns 

 are to grow, and by the time he is six months old these are 

 developed into sharp-pointed little stumps capable of doing 

 injury in an assault. They grow about an inch the first 

 year, and are cast in January ; but all succeeding horns are 

 cast a month or two earlier, until the creature reaches ma- 

 turity, when they are cast after the rutting season. Thus 

 we have the peculiar and interesting fact of an animal that 

 sheds and produces perfect hollow horns in a few months ; 

 whereas, in all other ruminants that have the same style 

 of horns, the growth is slow and gradual, and takes some 

 years to complete. Here, then, we have the missing link be- 

 tween those animals that have hollow and persistent horns, 

 and those which have solid and deciduous ones. In its 

 dental formula it is also a link between the two families 

 mentioned, for it has no canine teeth ; but it has eight in- 

 cisors in the lower jaw, and boasts twenty-four molars. In 

 its glandular system and salacious disposition it resembles 

 the goat, but it differs from it in the fact that, while the 

 former is the most indiscriminate of feeders, the most ac- 

 tive of climbers, and a lover of rocks and mountains, the 

 latter is the most particular of creatures in its choice of 

 food, one of the least able to clamber amidst crags and 

 precipices, and is at home only on the broad, treeless plains, 

 where all objects are distinctly visible. It has the coat of 

 the deer, and the eye and foot of the antelope, but it has 

 the habits of neither in any particular degree; so that it 

 may say, like Shakspeare's personage, 



"I have no brother; 

 I am myself alone." 



The hair of the antelope also differs from that of nearly 

 all ruminants, but it is most closely allied to that of the 

 deer. It is coarse and tubular, and therefore fragile, except 

 at the points, where it is solid, and, as a result, tenacious. 



