182 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 
was gone, and the seat was covered ‘with fresh blood. As he was 
eating corn from one hand, with the other I seized the remaining 
antler. He immediately jumped back and severed the antler 
with a smart snap. He shook his head and ran away as if con- 
siderably hurt, while the blood flowed so freely from the exposed 
end of the pedicel that it ran down the side of his face and 
dropped to the ground. An inspection of the end of the antler, 
at the point of separation, showed not a trace of blood, but the 
rough convex surface was as undefiled and as white as it is pos- 
sible to imagine. It was some minutes before he would so far for- 
give me as to come and take more corn from my hand. Then I 
saw the concave seat of the antler was filled. with blood already 
beginning to coagulate, and the hemorrhage had nearly ceased. 
The next fall, early in November, the same animal was follow- 
ing me through the grounds, begging for gratuities, while I 
wished to bestow my attentions more exclusively to a.pet gazelle, 
and in my impatience at his persistent importunities, I kicked 
backward, just as he lowered his head, when I knocked off one 
of his antlers. The dislocation took place with a smart cracking 
noise and probably by the use of about the same force as on the 
former occasion, and precisely the same phenomena were ob- 
served. He carried the remaining antler but a day or two when 
it disappeared. On this occasion this was the first deer in the 
park to lose his antlers, while on the other he carried them the 
longest of any. 
While the growing antler of the deer is but indifferently pro- 
vided with a nervous system, yet the upper portion, above where 
the ossified wall has become established, is in a situation resem- 
bling a high state of inflammation, and like really inflamed 
parts is exceedingly sensitive. In the deer’s antler the apparently 
inflammatory action or high temperature seems to subside so 
soon as the ossified wall becomes established, and the extreme 
sensibility in the outer covering disappears. There the antler 
may be handled, compressed, and even the velvet cut through, 
without manifestations of suffering, while above on the soft and 
yielding part, where the temperature is much higher than it is 
below, the least pressure or even touch seems to produce pain. 
The antler of the deer sometimes though rarely becomes dis- 
eased, when the same phenomena occur as in diseased internal 
bones. The channels of the blood-vessels become large and the 
vessels become expanded, and even the whole diseased part of 
the antler becomes greatly enlarged by the separation of the 
