vi. HORNS AND ANTLERS. 93 



special materials it requires ; out of them it elaborates tlie 

 crude bone stuff, at first soft as wax, but ere long to become 

 as hard as stone ; and then, having done its work, having 

 added its special morsel to the fabric of the antler, it 

 remains embedded and immured, buried beneath the bone- 

 products of its successors or descendants. No hive of bees 

 is busier or more replete with active life than the antler of 

 a stag as it grows beneath the soft warm velvet. And 

 thus are built up in the course of a few weeks those 

 splendid " beams," with their " tynes " and " snags/' which 

 even in the confinement of the Zoo may reach a weight of 

 thirty-two pounds, and which in the freedom of the Rocky 

 Mountains may attain such a size that a tall man may 

 walk without stooping beneath the archway made by set- 

 ting up on their points the shed antlers. When the antler 

 has reached its full size, a circular ridge makes its appear- 

 ance at a short distance from the base. This is the " burr " 

 which divides the antler into a short " pedicel," next the 

 skull, and the beam with its branches above. The cir- 

 culation in the blood-vessels of the beam now begins to 

 languish, and the velvet dies and peels off, leaving the hard, 

 dead, bony substance exposed. Then is the time for 

 fighting, when the stags challenge each other to single 

 combat, while the hinds stand timidly by. But when the 

 period of battle is over, and the wars and loves of the 

 year are past, the bone beneath the burr begins to be eaten 

 away and absorbed, and, the base of attachment being thus 

 weakened, the beautiful antlers are shed ; the scarred 

 surface skins over and heals, and only the hair-covered 

 pedicel of the antler is left. It is stated on the best 

 authority, scientific and practical, that stags often eat the 

 shed antlers, and thus utilize over again the material of 

 which they are formed. 



Undoubtedly the most useful to man of all the antlered 



