American Big Game in its Haunts 



the nasals. No deer has a gall bladder. There 

 are many other distinctions, but as all have excep- 

 tions they are of value only in combinations. 



The earliest known deer, belonging to the genus 

 Dremotherium, or Amphitragulus, from the mid- 

 dle Tertiary of France, were of small size and had 

 four toes, canine teeth and no antlers. Their suc- 

 cessors seem to have borne simple forked antlers 

 or horns, probably covered with hair, and perma- 

 nently fixed on the skull. Very similar animals ex- 

 isted in contemporaneous and later deposits in 

 North America. From this point the course of 

 progress is tolerably clear as to deer in general, 

 although we are not sure of all the intermediate de- 

 tails for it must not be forgotten that a series of 

 types exhibiting progressive modifications in each 

 succeeding geological period is quite as conclusive 

 in pointing out the genealogy of an existing group 

 as if we knew each individual term in the ancestral 

 series of each of its members. Thus we do not yet 

 know whether the peculiar antler of the distinctively 

 American deer, of the genus Mazama, is derived 

 from an American source or took its origin in the 

 old world, for the fossil antlers known as Ano- 

 glochis, from the Pliocene of Europe, are quite 

 suggestive of the Mazama style, but as nothing is 

 known of the other skeletal details of Anoglochis, 



78 



