144 MR. H. J. ELWES ON | Feb. 3, 
in the forest, that March is a more usual time, and this seems 
more probable having regard to the time at which the horns of 
other deer are shed. The new ones begin to grow in April 
or May, and are fully developed about the middle of August. In 
September the velvet is rubbed off against a young fir-tree, 
which is usually destroyed in the process, and from the middle to 
the end of September the rutting-season commences. At this 
season the bulls have a very strong, rank, musky smell, and 
scrape shallow round holes in the ground like stags’ wallows, which 
retain the scent of their urine for some days. Occasionally the 
bulls fight desperately, and I have seen places where the ground 
was tor up over many yards and sprinkled with hair and blood, 
but few hunters have had the good fortune to witness such an 
encounter. 
The development of the horns of the Elk in the Namsos district 
of Norway is apparently greater than in South Norway and 
Sweden, or in the districts which it still inhabits in Kast Prussia 
and Kurland, though I cannot speak with the same certainty as 
to Russia. 
On my return from Siberia, four years ago, I saw semifossil horns 
of the Elk from the district of Perm, which were larger than 
any I have seen in Hurope; but on visiting the best collections I 
could hear of in St. Petersburg, I saw none which appeared to me 
better than the best Norwegian heads, or so good as the one 
figured (text-fig. 23, p. 143), which is that of a Lithuanian Elk 
in the Branicki Museum at Warsaw. 
The bull calf has no horns the first year. The second year he 
has a small spike on each side, sometimes, but rarely, two spikes, 
and I have seen one on one side and two on the other. As he 
grows older it is supposed that the number of points increase 
annually, one on each side; but I think this is not at all invariably 
the case, and that the size and strength of the individual has much 
more influence than the age, and probably, as in the case of other 
deer which shed their horns annually, food and climate have a 
good deal to do with it. As a rule the horns inerease in size and 
number of points up to 10 or 12 years old and possibly more, and 
in old animals have a tendency to diminish in size and in the 
length and strength of the points. From 18 to 22 points are 
perhaps the average of adult males in Northern Norway, and 10 
to 14 points in Southern Norway. 
The widest span which I have ever seen is 54 inches (text- 
fig. 18, p. 134), and the greatest number of points 16 on one side, 
as on the shed horn of which I show a tracing (text-fig. 22, p. 142). 
The breadth of the palm in this instance and the number of points 
are quite exceptional, and I very much doubt whether there are 
any such Elk now alive in Norway, as Herr Bruun of Trondhjem, 
who has the opportunity of seeing all the finest specimens which 
are procured, says that he has seen nothing equal to them. 
Moose heads of as great or greater size are, however, often 
killed, and though the largest which I have ever seen is 65 inches 
