THE NEWFOUNDLAND CARIBOU 313 



attachment has not been previously noticed. It seems to be 

 useless, and can possess none of the functions of a gland. 



The horns of the old stags are dropped between the 

 30th of October and the 20th November. Often the males 

 cast their horns according to their years, the eldest first, and 

 the youngest last. Many five-year-old stags keep them on 

 until Christmas, but it is extremely rare to see a stag with 

 good horns after the ist of December. Unlike the red deer 

 and wapiti, the new horns do not begin to grow at once, 

 the tops of the pedicles being bare for some time before 

 the new growth starts. In fact, Newfoundland stags only 

 show an excrescence of a few inches in March ; after this 

 the horns develop rapidly. The horns of the males are 

 hard to the tips on the ist of September, and are rubbed 

 clean between the 7th and the 12th of that month. At first 

 they are pure white, but change in a few days to a beauti- 

 ful chestnut colour. In Newfoundland it is said that this 

 colour is obtained by the deer threshing its antlers against 

 the alder bushes, which exude a reddish brown sap, a view 

 which cannot be substantiated, because 80 per cent, of the 

 stags rub clean on dwarf spruce and larch trees, ^ in whose 

 neighbourhood there are no alders. But where alders are 

 found they are very fond of swinging the antlers from side 

 to side amongst them to clear whatever shreds of velvet 

 may remain. As the horns dry, the stags repair at midday 

 to high sandy " knaps" in the vicinity of their summer resorts 

 and lie in the sun. The Indians say that they always go 

 soon after to some stream, and there, gazing into Nature's 

 looking-glass, see whether their ornaments are of the correct 

 colour. If this view prove unsatisfactory they go to give them 



' Some colour is doubtless derived by rubbing on the bark of trees, since it is easy 

 to stain bleached antlers by dipping them in the boiling bark of var or spruce. 



