FALLOW DEER. 9 



the upper miocene they come out as fully 

 evolved as in our modern species. Every 

 intermediate stage can be traced between the 

 mere nascent boss like that of a budding roe 

 in our own day, and the many-branched head- 

 piece of the existing reindeer. Indeed, one 

 late tertiary species had a pair of wonderfully 

 intricate antlers which far surpassed in com- 

 plexity those of any living elk ; but, like many 

 other highly specialised creatures, this over- 

 developed type seems to have fallen a prey 

 to the great extinct carnivores of the same 

 period. Before the advent of man, many 

 such high types existed, and they may perhaps 

 have been partly destroyed by his monopo- 

 lising all the most open and desirable plains 

 as his special hunting grounds. For we now 

 know that man is certainly a quaternary, and 

 probably a tertiary genus as well ; and, even 

 in his lowest and humblest form, his intelli- 

 gence must have made him from the very 

 first a dominant race and the real lord of 

 creation. 



