ANTLER-GROWTH IN THE CERVID^. 781' 



Sir Victor Brooke incorrectly identified with the brow-tine of 

 the typical Old World deer. This error has been pointed out by 

 Mr. A. Gordon Cameron, [who stated that] these characteristic 

 tines have nothing in common with the true brows of Old World 

 types, and rise vertically from the inner side of the beam between 

 the coronet and the main furcation, usually converging at the 

 a.pex. They are subject, in common with the antlers that produce 

 them, to all kinds of eccentricities ; are frequently forked or sub- 

 palmate." 



Mr. Lydekker writes as if Mr. Cameron's dictum settled the 

 question at issue : but it does not appear to me that much weight 

 can be attached to the reasons adduced by the latter for his 

 dogmatic denial of the truth of Sir Victor Brooke's interpretation 

 of what Gray called the " subbasal snag " in the Virginian deer. 

 Except that the tine in question is situated on the inner side of 

 the antler, there is no great difierence between it and the brow- 

 tine of the Old World stags, which is highly variable in direction, 

 as a comparison between the antlers of, e. g., Cervus a finis and 

 Rusa aristotelis will show. Not less does it vary in size and 

 structure even in nearly allied forms, as is testified by Dama 

 dama, where it is large, by Dama mesopotaoni-ca, where it is 

 sometimes almost suppressed, and by the Irish Elk, believed ta 

 be a Damine stag, where it may be palmated and branched. 



The question to be settled, then, is this : — Does the position of 

 this tine on the inner side of the antler in the Virginian deer 

 preclude its being the homologue of the brow-tine situated on the 

 front of the antler in the Old World deer ? Study of the growth 

 of the antler justifies, in my opinion, a negative answer to this 

 question and shows that Sir Victor Brooke's opinion was correct. 



Early last year the Society received from the northern part of 

 South America a male specimen of Odocoileus, which I cannot 

 determine accurately. It is smaller and browner than a Venezuela 

 specimen identified as 0. savannarum, but is otherwise very like 

 it. Its antlers are short, with the beam curved forwards in the 

 upper portion and ending in two tines, an anterior and a posterior ;. 

 while on the inner side, near the base, arises the so-called " sub- 

 basal snag." 



The growth of these antlers was very instructive. They started 

 as a simple excrescence, which soon began to divide into an anterior 

 and a posterior bud, the only difierence between the antlers at 

 this stage and those of a typical Old World deer being that the 

 anterior bud was slightly internal and projected a little inwards 

 as well as forwards. Nevertheless the two buds were perfectly 

 visible in profile view. The appearance of the antler at this 

 stage is shown in text-fig. 112, ^, taken on May 12th. Four more- 

 stages of the growth are represented in the following figures, £-E, 

 taken respectively on May 22nd, May 30th, June 6th, and 

 June 17th, which show very markedly the gradual assumption of 

 an apparently more internal position by the anterior branch, its- 



