1856.] OWEN — RED CRAG MAMMALS. 225 



the base formed by the enamel-islands. There is a low accessory 

 tubercle at the bottom of the cleft between the two outer crescents"". 



A second specimen of antler, from a crag-pit near Felixstow, is larger 

 than the foregoing, but offers the same characteristics. The beam is 

 rather shorter in proportion to its girth above the burr ; it is 2 inches 

 long and 4 inches in girth ; but it shows the same convexity at the 

 side next the burr and the same concavity on the opposite side. It has 

 been a shed antler ; the slightly convex, absorbed surface bears the 

 same proportion to the entire base of the antler as in fig. 14 ; the 

 burr, in like manner, is limited to, or chiefly developed from, one 

 half of the circumference of the base, where it has projected from 3 

 to 4 lines beyond the line of attachment. 



Assuming one and perhaps the chief use of the burr to be to defend 

 the subjacent skin from abrasion, in actions of the antlers when they 

 are strongly rubbed from above downwards against a hard body — 

 and were it not for such projecting ledge, such actions might peel off 

 the skin where it abruptly terminates at the circumference of the basal 

 adhesion of the antler to the skull,— I infer, from the partial de- 

 velopment of the burr in the Dicranoceros of the Red-crag, that the 

 pedicle supporting the antler was so oblique as to render such defence 

 necessary only on one — probably the anterior and outer — ^^side of the 

 antler. 



M. Gervais has figured, pi. 7. fig. 1 . op. cit., a shed antler of a Deer 

 having the same short, simply bifurcated form as the C. dicrano- 

 cerus of the Eppelsheim miocene and the Suffolk crag. It is rather 

 more slender in proportion to its length ; the burr, according to the 

 figure, shows the same partial development from one-half of the basal 

 circumference. The fossil is from the lower pliocene (marine sands 

 and blue and yellow marls) of Montpellier. The accomplished French 

 naturalist refers this bifurcate antler to the Cervus australis of 

 M. de Serres. 



Similar bifurcated antlers, probably not materially differing from 

 the foregoing,, or from the Cervus dicranocerus of Kaup, except in 

 having been found attached to their supporting bony pedicles, form 

 the type of the subgenus '■' Dicroceros'^ of M. Lartet, and occur in 

 the miocene lacustrine molasse at Sansan, Gers. 



The largest portion of antler of the Cervus dicranocerus which I 

 have, as yet, received from the Suffolk crag-pits, is 4 inches in 

 length, and the preserved part of the main branch of this antler is 

 continued in a more direct line from the base than is either of the 

 divisions of the best-preserved antler figured by Kaup, tab. 24. 

 tig. 3 c, op. cit. The example of the Cervus dicranocerus, from a 

 crag-pit near Ipswich, Suffolk, fig. 16, sends off the smaller or sub- 

 sidiary fork a little nearer the base than in the smaller specimens ; 

 the base, however, shows well the same characteristic partial develop- 

 ment of the burr, a, a, as in the other fossils. The circumference of the 

 antler, above the burr, is 4 inches 9 lines ; the breadth of the burr is 

 from 5 to 6 lines, being proportionally more than its vertical thickness, 



* See the figures of the modifications of homologous similar molars in my 

 ' Odontography,' pi. 134. figs. 1-8, fig. 5 being that of the Cervus megaceros. 



