134 The North American Cervidce. 



horn beneath the periosteum — the membrane which incases the 

 living bone. 



The horns reach their full size in August, and, from being at first 

 very soft and afterward spongy, have at length become quite hard. 

 They are, however, still covered with the "velvet," and beneath this 

 the blood continues to circulate, but now more slowly than at any 

 time since the horn began to grow. The time at which the horn 

 becomes fit for use as a weapon of offense or defense varies slightly 

 in the different species of our deer, but is usually about Septem- 

 ber i. The animal's head now appears to trouble him, and to be irri- 

 tated like a healing wound, and he rubs his horns violently in the 

 bushes or against the branches and trunks of trees. The tender 

 "velvet" is thus torn off and hangs in bleeding strips about his horns 

 and head, but he continues to rub for several days, until at length the 

 antlers are quite free from skin, their tips white and polished, and 

 the inequalities about the burr filled with finely crushed fragments of 

 bark. He is then ready for the rutting season, which immediately 

 ensues. 



The horn is now dead, and at its connection with the skull — the 

 extremity of the pedicel — absorption begins to take place, and in 

 the course of four or five months the attachment to the frontal is so 

 weakened that the horn drops off of its own weight. The end of the 

 pedicel bleeds a little at first, but almost at once heals over, and until 

 the following spring is covered with the black skin already mentioned. 



As a rule, these weapons are borne only by the male deer ; but 

 the female caribou always has small horns, and in very rare instances 

 the female Virginia deer has been killed with a single spike, or a 

 pair of straight, short, and scarcely branched horns. The horns of 

 all our North American deer become fit for service in September, 

 and they are shed at various times from December to March. 



From what has already been said, it will be seen that a deer is an 

 artiodactyle ruminating ungulate, with solid, deciduous horns. 



The arrangement of the teeth in this family is as follows : In- 

 cisors, j ; canines, £:£, or wanting ; molars, flf . Canines are said to 

 be always wanting in the female, but this is by no means true of all 

 species, for they are usually present in the female of Cervus Cana- 

 densis, and I have also detected small ones occasionally in Cariacus 

 Columbianus. 



