92 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



Turning now to the antlered deer, we shall find that 

 their horns (antlers they are more correctly termed) are 

 very different from those of the oxen and the antelopes. 

 As a rule (the reindeer is the exception that proves it) they 

 only adorn the brows of the male. They are generally in 

 full-grown stags splendidly and nobly branched. They 

 are, at any rate in cold and temperate latitudes, cast off or 

 shed every year, new antlers of greater size and com- 

 plexity being formed in the following spring; and they 

 are, when growth has ceased and the time for fighting 

 has come, composed of hard dense bone without any horny 

 covering. 



Pause as, in autumn, you enter the Gardens by the 

 southern gate, before the splendid wapiti often misnamed 

 the elk by American hunters. Is there a more noble and 

 beautiful animal in the Zoo ? See how the antlers branch 

 and rebranch and once more branch again ! How proudly 

 he carries them ! What terrible weapons they are with 

 their sharp bony points ! How he clashes them against 

 the bars of his enclosure ! But come again in spring or 

 early summer when the antlers are growing. How different 

 they look ! How careful he is not to bring them in 

 contact with the bars against which he will clash them in 

 the autumn ! They are covered over with a dark skin 

 provided with short, fine, close-set hair, and technically 

 termed the velvet. If you could lay your hand upon this 

 velvet, as I laid mine on the growing antlers of a reindeer 

 in Dresden, you would feel that it is hot with the nutrient 

 life-blood that is coursing beneath it. It is, too, exceed- 

 ingly sensitive and tender. An army of tens of thousands 

 of busy living cells are at work beneath that velvet surface 

 building the bony antlers, preparing for the battles of 

 autumn. Each minute cell knows its work and does it for 

 the general good. It takes up from the nutrient blood the 



