222 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 



may study the subject, can ever decide by their inspection from 

 which species either came ; while he will readily determine that 

 they grew on no other species of deer. 



There is, however, another form of antler sometimes met with 

 on both the Columbia and the Mule deer, much more resembling 

 the antler of the Virginia deer, and which one who had not care- 

 fully studied them might readily mistake for the antler of the 

 latter. One of these in my collection is from a Columbia Deer, 

 killed near the Calaveras grove of big trees, in the Siei'ra Ne- 

 vadas, and is shown in Fig. 20, and another specimen is now on a 

 two year old Mule Deer in my grounds ; they are his second 

 antlers, the first having been medium sized spike antlers. Those 

 on the Mule Deer are about the same size as those from the Colum- 

 bia Deer, which were probably also from a young animal. They 

 are considerably smaller than the usual size of the antlers grown 

 on the adult of both these species. From this we might be led 

 to the conclusion that this exceptional form is usually grown on 

 young animals, and it may be so, but it certainly is not always so, 

 for there is a skeleton of a fully adult Mule Deer in the museum 

 of the Chicago Medical College, which has this form of antler 

 with all its peculiarities ; nor do the young males always have 

 this form of antler, for as we have seen, I had a Mule Deer Avith 

 dag antlers which were forked, with tines of equal lengths ; and I 

 have seen many specimens not fully adult, with antlers of the 

 usual form grown on these species. This exceptional form of 

 antler for its lower part has a posterior inclination, and then 

 curves anteriorly like the beam of the Virginia deer, but the ra- 

 dius of the curve is much longer than that on the latter animal ; 

 nor does the upper part of the beam ever point so directly for- 

 ward. If this form of the beam is ever found on the Virginia 

 deer it must be very exceptional, for I have never observed it. 

 The next departure from the antler of the Virginia deer is in 

 the basal snag, which is much smaller, corresponding in size with 

 that on the usual bifurcated antler. The tines are all projected 

 posteriorly from the beam, like those on the Virginia deer, but 

 they are proportionally much longer, are not curved, and are of a 

 different form. On the common deer if the tines are flattened at 

 all it is at their base, where they always show their greatest diam- 

 eters. On the others the lower part of the tine is always round,, 

 one quarter or one third of the way up, where it flattens out into 

 something of a triangular form, so that it there shows a larger 

 diameter than below. As we proceed toward the point, how- 



