50 Note on Antlers of Red-Deer from Bakeicell, Derbyshire. 



" About five years ago, some men working in a quarry of that 

 kind of stone which in this part of the country we call ' tuft ' [tufa]/ 

 at about five or six feet below the surface, in a very solid part of the 

 rock, met with several fragments of the horns [antlers] and bones of 

 one or different animals. 



" x\mongst the rest, out of a large piece of the rock which they got 

 entire, there appeai-ed the tips of three or four horns [antlers] pro- 

 jecting a few inches from it, and the scapula of some animal adhering 

 to the outside of it. A friend of mine, to whom the quarry belongs, 

 sent the piece of the rock to me, in the state they got it, in which 

 I let it remain for some time. 



"But suspecting that they might be tips of the horns [antlers] 

 of some head enclosed in the lump, I determined to gratify my 

 curiosity by clearing away the stone from the horns [antlers]. On 

 doing which, I found that the lump contained a very large stag's 

 head, with two antlers upon each horn, in very perfect preservation, 

 inclosed in it. 



" Though the horns [antlers] are so much larger than those of any 

 stag T have ever seen, yet, from the sutures in the skull appearing 

 very distinct in it, one would suppose that it was not the head of 

 a very old animal. 



" I have one of the horns nearly entire, and the greatest part of 

 the other, but so broken in the getting out of the rock, that one part 

 will not join to the other, as the parts of the other horn [antler] do. 



"The horns [antlers] are of that species which park-keepers in 

 this part of the country call ' throstle-nest horns,' from the peculiar 

 formation of the upper part of them, which is branched out into 

 a number of short [tines or] antlers which form a hollow about 

 large enough to contain a thrush's nest. 



" I send you the dimensions of the different parts of them, com- 

 pared with the horns [antlers] of the same species of a large stag 

 which have probably hung in the place from whence I procured 

 them, two or three or perhaps more centuries ; and with another 

 pair of horns [antlers] of a different kind which are terminated by 

 one single pointed antler and which were the horns [antlei's] of 

 a seven-year-old stag \_Cervus elaphus^. 



" The river Larkell runs down the valley, and part of it falls 

 into the quarry where these horns [antlers] were found, the water of 

 which has not the property of incrusting any bodies it passes through. 



" It is therefore probable that the animal to which these horns 

 [antlers] belonged was washed into the place where they were 

 found, at the time of some of those convulsions which contributed to 

 raise this part of the Island out of the sea. 



" Besides this complete head, I have sevei'al pieces of horns, bones 

 (particularly the scapula I mentioned above), and several vertebrae 

 of the back found in the same quarry ; some, if not all, of them 

 probably belonging to the animal whose head is in my possession. 



' Tuft {tufa) is a stone formed by the (calcareoiis) deposit left by water passing 

 through beds of sticks, roots, vegetables, etc., of which there is a large stratum at 

 Matlock Bath, in this county. 



