September 1, 1890.] 



KNOW J^ EDGE. 



205 



HORNS AND ANTLERS. 



])y H. Lydekker, 15. a. Cantab. 



IN a former article, entitled " Mail-Clad Animals," we 

 treated of what may be termed the armature of 

 animals for i^assive resistance ; while in the present 

 communication it is our intention to consider cer- 

 tain forms of armature adapted either for active 

 resistance or for actual attack. Many forms of this type of 

 armature, such as the tusk.y and claws of the Cat-tribe 

 and other Carnivores, the pincers of the Lobster, the sting 

 of the Bee and the Scorpion, and the poison-fang of the 

 Adder, will at once jDresent themselves to the mind of the 

 reader ; but on this occasion we propose to confine our 

 attention to those types of armature commonly known as 

 horns and antlers, which are now met with only among 

 the Hoofed or Ungulate Mammals ; although, as we shall 

 mention in the se(iuel, the former were also developed in 

 past epochs among a lower group of animals. 



^*^ ^^7 



Fig. 1. — Head of FALLow-Diacu, to show blanching and jjalm<itod 

 antlers. 



It will, tirst of all, be essential to thoroughly under- 

 stand what we mean by the terms " horn " and " antler," 

 since, although both are purely P^nglish words, there is 

 often great confusion in their application ; the term 

 horn being often applied to an antler, although the con- 

 verse misnomer is never met with. 



Commencing with antlers, it is scarcely necessary to say 

 that the organs so named are the branching bony pro- 

 tuberances borne upon the heads of the males of most 

 species of Deer during a certain part of the year. The 

 nature of these appendages is well shown in the accom- 

 panying woodcut, drawn by Mr. H. A. Cole, from the 

 head of a Fallow-Deer shot in Epping Forest in 1884. 

 In the figured species the extremities of the antlers are 

 flattened out, and are accordingly termed palmated ; but 

 in the iled Deer, and most other species, they are more or 



less completely cylindi-ical throughout the greater part of 

 their length. 



The most characteristic feature of the outer surface of 

 an antler is its ruggedness, which reminds us somewhat of 

 the bark of a tree, and is taken advantage of in the manu- 

 facture of so-called " buckshorn " knife-handles, &c. 

 Antlers are, indeed, almost quite peculiar in that they 

 represent, when fully formed, an entirel}- dead structure 

 borne by a living animal as part and parcel of itself, and 

 their mode of growth is very interesting. Thus, some 

 time after a stag has shed its antlers, there appear on the 

 summit of the skull two small velvety knobs, very tender 

 and sensitive, and supplied by an unusual number of blood- 

 vessels. These knobs, which are deposits of bony matter, 

 very rapidly increase in size, and soon begin to branch 

 into a number of so-called tynes, and finally assume the 

 form of the complete antlers. It will thus be evident that 

 even when fully grown the new antlers are still entirely 

 covered with the soft skin known as the " velvet," beneath 

 which the blood-vessels carry the blood to all their parts. 

 With the final completion of their growth, and the cessa- 

 tion of the deposition of bony matter from the blood over 

 the greater part of the antler, there is formed, however, 

 at the very Isase above the point where the antler joins the 

 protuberance on the forehead fi'om which it takes its rise, 

 a rough prominent rmg of bone. This protuberant ring, 

 which is commonly known as the " burr," and is often 

 used to form the end of whip-handles, serves to constrict 

 the blood-vessels at this point, so that henceforth no blood 

 is carried over the antlers. In consequence of this de- 

 privation of blood, the " velvet " rapidly dries up, and 

 either peels off, or is rubbed off by the animal against the 

 stems and branches of trees. The antlers are then com- 

 plete, and their owner steps proudly forward from the 

 sequestered glades in which he has lain concealed during 

 the period of their growth as the " monarch of the glen. ' 



This, then, is the mode of development of antlers ; and 

 after they have served their purpose as weapons of offence 

 during the fierce encounters which take place between the 

 males during the breeding season, the living bone beneath 

 the skin at the base of the burr is absorbed, and the 

 antler, or dead bone, is shed, to be again renewed in the 

 same manner as before. 



Another point in connection with antlers is, however, 

 noteworthy — namely, that they gradually increase in com- 

 plexity as the age of the animal advances. Thus, the 

 head of the Fallow-Deer represented in Figure 1 evidently 

 belongs to a fully-grown buck, for a yoimg animal would 

 have had much simpler antlers. Indeed, in the fawns of 

 the first year the antlers of the Eed-Deer consist only of a 

 single prong, with a short front tyue ; and year by year as 

 they are renewed they acquire a greater and still greater 

 number of tynes 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 li\'ing species. When we go still farther hack 

 in past time, and come to the lower part of the Tertiary 

 epoch, wo find, indeed, that the Deer had no antlers at all; 

 and it is thus curious to observe, as in so many other in- 

 stances, that the gradual 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. 



