Jan. 14, 1875] 



NA TURE 



211 



to the greatest palmation of the horns, than is the case in 

 the other three specimens. The explanation of this dis- 

 crepancy is very simple. The former represents (as its 

 own characters and a comparison of it with the re- 

 mainder of the fragments with the species found at 

 Clacton readily prove) a young animal, probably a buck 

 of four years of age, whilst the other figures represent the 

 horns of adult animals. In the immature Clacton Deer 



the force expended in producing the abnormal tyne d 

 well-nigh exhausted the supply at the command of a 

 system fully occupied with t'.ie production of things more 

 needful, namely, materials for the vigorous increase and 

 consolidation of flesh and bono . Hence the long, atte- 

 nuated palm, which probably ended very much in the 

 manner in which Mr. Boyd Dawkins has restored it. 

 Analogous instances of excess of growth in one direction, 



Fig. 3. -Right Horn of Wild S.irj;ir,,ii Kallow Deer. 



causing a corresponding defect in another, may be seen 

 in all large collections of deers' horns ; indeed, in my own 

 collection I find the horn of a young fallow buck, in which 

 the characters specially alluded to in the type of Ccrvits 

 biownii are shown in a still more marked degree. 



These facts appear to me fully to justify the re- 

 jection of Ccrvus brownii as i species distinct from 

 Ccrzuis daina, and therefore to warrant the belief in the 

 existence of this species in England during I'leistocene 

 times. Whether the Fallow Deer became extinct in 



HELM HO LIZ ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF 

 THE DEDUCTIVE METHOD IN PHYSICAL 

 SCIENCE * 



■Vl /■£ have still to speak of his attack on the authors of 

 • • this book with regard to the emission theory of 

 light. They say that such a theory is not to be justified 

 unless a light-corpuscle has been actually seen and inves- 

 tigated. In this demand Mr. Zollner detects " an impos- 

 sibility which is not simply physical, but even logical, and 

 which it is easy to expose. In fact, if the sensation of 

 light ii produced only when the corpuscles come in con- 

 tact with our nerves, it is obviously iinpossiblcKo have any 

 ocular perception of such a corpuscle before it has 

 touched or affected our nerves of sight." And then this 

 remark is followed by declamation about gross blunders 



* Concluded from p. 151. 



Fig. 4.— Riglir Horn of Park Fallow Deer. 



Northern Europe before the advent of Prehistoric man, 

 or whether it continued to exist in these islands even at 

 the commencement of the Roman occupation, are ques- 

 tions which strike me as altogether besiue that of the 

 truth of the "ancient belief" to which Mr. Eoyd Dawkins 

 shows such firm allegiance. In either case, the species 

 may have been reintroduced by the Romans, a people 

 whose magnificently lavish expenditure upon lu.xury and 

 pleasure despised bounds. 



Victor Brooke 



in logic, absolute nonsense, and so on. And, in fact, there 

 is absolute nonsense here ; only the nonsense does not 

 lie in what the English writers have said, but in the inter- 

 pretation which their opponent has put upon their words. 

 Does a man who believes himself so superior to his 

 antagonists in the firmness of his grasp of the principles 

 of the theory of knowledge, still need to have it explained 

 to him that to sec an object means, according to the enis- 

 sion theory, to receive in the eye, and so to feel, the 

 corpuscles of light that rebound from the object in ques- 

 tion ? But, this being so, there is no logical impossibility, 

 and nothing inconsistent with the premises of the theory, 

 in the supposition that a light-corpuscle at rest — and the 

 corpuscles are at rest as soon as they are absorbed by 

 dark bodies — may throw off other corpuscles that impinge 

 on it, and so may become for these a centre of radiation, 

 which will be visible as the radiant point. Whether such 



