4 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



§ 3. Description and Identification of Antlers. — The series of fifteen antlers belonging 

 to this form, of which nine are attached to the frontals, confirm the evidence offered by 

 the skulls that the animal to which they belonged was an Elk, but specifically different 

 from the Alces machlis. The bur (PL I, a) is stout, and at right angles or nearly so to 

 the main axis of the beam. The beam is cylindrical (figs. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6), strongly 

 grooved, and without tines up to the beginning of the palmation of the crown. In the 

 most perfect specimen, figured and described by Mr. Johnson 1 as Cervus latifrons, the 

 first tine of the palm (fig. 6, c) is preserved, sweeping forwards as in the living Elk 

 (fig. 7), and presenting an arc which measures 37 inches from the interfrontal suture. 

 The rest of the palm, including tine e, is broken away. The beam curves slightly down- 

 wards and then upwards, and begins to be flattened at a distance of 12 inches from the 

 bur, the basal portion sweeping away in the frontal plane at right angles to the frontals. 

 A second specimen in the Norwich Museum, and referred by Mr. Johnson to the 

 same species, also measures 12 inches from the bur to the beginning of the palma- 

 tion. Two antlers in the collection of Mr. Savin, the one attached to the skull (fig. 1) 

 and the other (fig. 5) to a fragment of frontal bone, possess longer and more sigmoid 

 beams than the two antlers above described, the beginning of the palmation being 16 

 inches from the bur in the one and 15 inches in the other (see Table II). This differ- 

 ence, however, is probably not of specific, or even of varietal, value when viewed in the 

 light of a similar variation in the antlers of Alces machlis, in which the measurement 

 ranges from a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 7 inches (see Table III). In other words, 

 the variation taken in relation to the length of beam from bur to palmation is 25 per 

 cent, in the fossil, while it rises to 28 per cent, in the living Elk. 



These characters are repeated in the antler referred to Cervus bovides by Mr. Gunn. 

 The decrease in the circumference of the beam in this specimen from the bur to the frac- 

 tured end, below the palmation, noticed by Mr. E. T. Newton, 2 is the rule rather than the 

 exception in the whole series. In this case the beam is broken at 9 inches from the bur, 

 or 3 inches below the point where the palmation begins in the antler, fig. 6. 



The beam, as may be seen in the tables of measurements (Tables II and III), is much 

 longer (more than twice as long) in the fossil than in the recent Alces. This greater 

 length is the only specific character which is revealed by the series of broken antlers 

 which have been examined. 



1 ' Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist.,' 4th series, 1874, vol. xiii, p. 1, pi. i. 



2 Op. cit., p. 58. 



