:23o ANIMAL LIFE PAST AND PRESENT. 



and branches, till they finally attain the complete 

 stage, when their owner is termed a " royal hart." 

 And a similar gradual increase in complexity takes 

 place in the case of the Fallow-Deer and most other 

 species. A few forms, however, like the Roe, always 

 retain a comparatively simple type of antler, and thus 

 recall the Deer of the middle Tertiary period, when 

 none of the species had attained the complex antlers 

 found in the larger living species. When we go still 

 farther back in past time, and come to the lower part 

 of the Tertiary epoch, we find, indeed, that the Deer 

 had no antlers at all ; and it is thus curious to observe, 

 as in so many other analogous instances, that the gra- 

 dual annual increase in the complexity of the antlers 

 of an individual of one of the existing species, is but 

 an epitome of the gradual evolution during geologic 

 times of the complex antlers of the living forms from 

 the simple ones of their early ancestors. 



Great variation occurs in the form assumed by the 

 antlers of the different species of deer. Thus, as we 

 have said, in the Roe the antlers are simply forked, 

 while in the fully-developed Red Deer they may have 

 as many as sixteen points. In the Fallow-Deer the 

 extremities only (Fig. 78) are distinctly palmated ; but 

 in the Elk, or Moose, the palmation embraces nearly 

 the whole of the antler, and attains an enormous 

 development. Of the species with cylindrical antlers 

 those which attain the greatest development in this 

 respect are the Canadian Wapiti, the great stag of the 

 Thian Shan range, and some allied species from Tibet 



