RUMINANT QUADRUPEDS. 353 



arteries, whether from the effect of the progressive deposition 

 of osseous matter, or from some change in the balance of the 

 vital powers, shrink, and become, by degrees, obliterated. 

 The antler dies in consequence, and, although it continues to 

 adhere to the skull, it is only as a foreign body, and it is not 

 long destined to remain thus attached ; for the absorbent ves- 

 sels are now actively employed in scooping out a groove of 

 separation between the living and the decayed substance, at 

 the place where the base of the antler is contiguous to the 

 frontal bone. As soon as this has proceeded to a sufficient 

 depth, the adhesion ceases, and the slightest concussion occa- 

 sions the fall of the whole structure. After the separation of 

 the antler, the eminence of the frontal bone, on which it stood, 

 is left rough and uneven, like that of a fractured part : but 

 the surrounding integuments soon close over, and cover it 

 completely ; until the period arrives when it is to be replaced 

 by a new antler, which exhibits the same succession of phe- 

 nomena, in its growth and decay, as its predecessor, only that 

 its development is usually carried farther, the new stem being 

 both thicker and longer, and the branches wider and more 

 numerous. The antler of each successive year has, conse- 

 quently, a different form from that of the preceding; and, 

 when the animal has attained a certain age, the extremities 

 of the branches present broad expansions of bone, which the 

 antlers of an earlier growth had neveV exhibited. 



The short bony processes which extend in a perpendicular 

 direction on the head of the cameleopard, are analogous, in 

 some of the circumstances of their formation, to the antlers of 

 the deer, being of an osseous nature, and continuous with the 

 frontal bone : but, in other respects, they are very different ; 

 for, instead of being annually shed, they remain through life, 

 and continue to be covered with the integuments, which re- 

 tain, at the extremities, a tuft of hair. The development of 

 these processes, in the young animal, takes place in the same 

 manner as that of an antler, but it reaches only to a certain 

 point, upon attaining which, the growth is arrested, and never 

 proceeds farther. The arteries cease to deposite superabun- 



VoL. I. 45 



