The Zoology of North American Big Game 



animals known seem to have had no antlers at all, 

 a stage to which the fawn of the year corresponds ; 

 the subsequent normal addition in the life-history, 

 of a tine for each year of growth until the mature 

 antler is reached, answering with exactness to the 

 stages of advance shown in the development-history 

 of the race. A year of individual life is the symbol 

 of a geological period of progression. This is a 

 marvelous record, of which we may say para- 

 phrasing with Huxley the well-known saying of 

 Voltaire "if it had not already existed, evolution 

 must have been invented to explain." 



The least technical, and for the present purpose 

 the most useful of the characters distinguishing 

 existing deer from all of the bovine stock, lies in 

 the antlers, which are solid, of bony substance, and 

 are annually shed. They are present in the males 

 of all species except the Chinese water deer, and 

 the very divergent musk-deer, which probably 

 should not be regarded as a deer at all. They are 

 normally absent from all females except those of 

 the genus Rangifer. Most deer have canine teeth 

 in the upper jaw, though they are absent in the 

 moose, in the distinctively American type and a few 

 others. The cleaned skull always shows a large 

 vacuity in the outer wall in front of the orbit, 

 which prevents the lachrymal bone from reaching 



77 



