18 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



however, the large number shows that the type was persistent in a group consisting of 

 forty-one animals, no two of the antlers having belonged to the same individual. Those 

 of the right side are twenty-four in number, and out of the whole, fourteen have been 

 forcibly torn from the skull, twenty-five have been shed, and two are mere fragments of 

 tines. Out of them I have chosen a series (PI. IV, figs. 1 — 7) to illustrate the characters 

 of the species. 



§ 2. Description of Antlers. — The antlers (PL IV, figs. 1 — 7) are nearly smooth, 

 being traversed merely by broad and shallow depressions for the reception of the nutrient 

 blood-vessels of the velvet. They are set on the skull obliquely to the axis of the beam, 

 as in the red deer, fallow deer, and Irish elk. The pedicle (fig. 4) is round and 

 short, varying in length from 0*8 to 1*1 inch. The bur, or rose of the Germans, is 

 uncertainly developed, being large and sharply defined in some (figs. 3, 4), and but 

 rudimentary in others. It presents a rounded outline. Immediately above it, the brow- 

 tine, b, is given off nearly at right angles to the axis of the beam ; the angle, however, 

 varies slightly in different individuals (figs. 3, 4, 5). It is cylindrical in section, with a 

 direction somewhat downward basally, and upward as it tapers to its extreme end. It is 

 sometimes straight. After giving off the brow-tine the rounded beam bends down- 

 wards as far as the flattened area, which marks the base of the second tine, c, and is 

 also slightly curved forwards. Two antlers present a variation from the ordinary type : 

 in the one a rudimentary tine springs out of the base of the brow-tine, b ; in the other 

 (fig. 5) an accessory tine, c , which perhaps may be a brow-tine, is thrown off from the 

 beam at a distance of 1*75 inches above the normal brow-tine (b). This variation is also 

 found in an antler of a fallow deer in the College of Surgeons. In an antler of Cervus 

 e!ap//us, also in the same collection, there are three brow-tines. The second tine (figs. 2, 

 3, and 4, c) is shaped somewhat like the first ; but it springs from a flattened base, so 

 that the section presented is oval. The variations in direction noticed in the brow-tine 

 are repeated also in the second, c, and both are nearly of the same length. From the 

 base of the second tine the beam gradually becomes more and more flattened up to the 

 palmated fourth (fig. 3, <?), which is unfortunately broken in all the specimens ; thence it 

 gradually expands into the broad and flattened crown (fig. 3, d,^,/), the summit of 

 which has been broken away from the nearly perfect antler, fig. 3, chosen as the type of 

 the species. It presents, however, two broad, oval, fractured surfaces, which meet at the 

 point where the texture becomes dense and hard, indicating that the hard cortical layer 

 of the antler was not far distant, while, on the other hand, the loose texture in the centre 

 of each of these surfaces shows that the crown was prolonged some little distance in their 

 directions. An inference might therefore be drawn that not very much of the apex is lost. 

 It consisted of two, or at most three tines. Fortunately, however, we are not left to guess 

 at the shape of the latter. A broad palmated fragment, possessed of two tines (fig. 7), 

 was associated with the antlers, which cannot be referred to the red deer or Irish elk, 



