174 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 
presents simply the appearance of coagulated blood, but, as might 
be expected, a closer examination discloses a regular and highly 
organized arterial and venous system, traversing a mass of soft 
and highly excited animal tissue. 
Now commences the process of ossification. First around the 
border of the pedicel the osteal cells and the intercellular tissue 
receive deposits of the earthy particles, and thus the growth of the 
new bone is commenced at the external portion or the circumfer- 
ence at the seat of the antler. The process now goes on rapidly, 
by the formation of new intercellular tissue and osteal cells on 
the inner side of the membrane, which in turn receive their de- 
posit of earthy matter, rapidly building up the outer wall and 
slowly filling up the interior with cancellous tissue. The cells of 
the cancellous tissue commence filling up with earthy matter, 
and arranging themselves into Haversian systems so soon as they 
themselves are formed, and so the lower circumference of the 
antler is first hardened into tolerably compact bone ; but it is at 
this very point that this process goes on the most slowly, else the 
sources of nutriment which rise up through the bony process of 
the skull, upon which alone the antler must depend for nutriment 
to finish its growth after the periosteum shall have been removed 
from its surface, would be cut off while there is much work to be 
done especially on young animals, after this greatest means of 
supply is gone. I was first made aware of this fact many years 
since, when I caught a young elk with his first antlers about two 
feet long, and finely branched near the ends. ‘These antlers had 
been divested of their velvet for three months, and to all appear- 
ance entirely matured. Before putting him into the cage to be 
sent to the Central Park, New York, where he played the sov- 
ereign for many years, I sawed off his antlers about two inches 
above the burrs. I was surprised to find the blood to flow quite 
freely, sufficient to stain the saw for the whole length used. In 
no other case have I sawed off the antlers from so young an ani- 
mal, but very often from adults of the various species, from none 
of which did I find the blood to flow; but in all cases, the blood- 
vessels and the color were plainly visible to the naked eye, for a 
greater or less area near the middle of the antler, until near the 
time when it would drop off. 
But if Mr. George Kennan is not mistaken in what he saw, 
the blood circulates still more freely through the apparently ma- 
tured antlers of ‘the adult domesticated reindeer in Siberia. In 
“Tent Life in Siberia” (p. 186), he says: “ To prevent the in- 
