322 UNGULATA 



number of snags, often arranged in a cup -like manner. Skull as 

 in the preceding group. All the species large. The Red Deer, 

 C. elaphus, which is dark brown in colour, with a light patch on 

 the rump, inhabits Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa the 

 so-called Barbary Deer not being specifically distinct. A full-grown 

 Scotch Stag is fully 4 feet in height at the withers. The antlers are 

 shed between the end of February and the early part of April ; old 

 animals shedding earlier than younger ones. The young, which 

 (as in all the members of the genus except some of the Rusirie 

 species) are spotted, are born at the end of May or the beginning 



FIG. 129. Head of the Wapiti (Cervus canade)isis). 



of June. The points on the antlers increase in number with the 

 age of the creature, and when twelve are present it is known in 

 Scotland as a " royal stag." This number, however, is sometimes 

 exceeded, as in the case of a pair of antlers, weighing 74 Ibs., from 

 a stag killed in Transylvania, which had forty-five points. The 

 antlers during the second year consist of a simple unbranched stem, 

 to which a tine or branch is added in each succeeding year, until 

 the normal development is attained, after which their growth is 

 somewhat irregular. Many of the antlers dug up in British peat- 

 beds (as Fig. 118) are larger than those of living individuals, and 

 in the cave-deposits of England and the Continent antlers are met 

 with rivalling those of the Wapiti in size ; these large fossil antlers 



