2 90 BRITISH MAMMALS 



been said that certain antelopes can shed this horny covering and 

 renew it, in which case they would offer a distinct approximation 

 to the prongbuck's plan ; but this statement lacks confirmation, 

 and in all cases which have come under the writer's observation, 

 where antelopes or oxen have by some accident had a horny 

 sheath torn off the bone core it has not been renewed. 



All the Pecora have the stomach divided into four chambers, 

 and all of them are True Ruminants. 



Family: CERVID^. THE DEER 



With regard to the peculiarities concerning the growth of the 

 deer's antlers, it only remains to add in a general description of 

 this family that antlers are entirely confined to the male (abnor- 

 malities apart), except in the aberrant and remarkable reindeer, 

 in which genus the females also grow antlers.^ All the deer as 

 yet examined have four mammae. One genus, Hydropotes (a 

 hornless deer), produces from three to six young at a time. 

 Forms of primitive deer allied to Hydropotes were inhabitants of 

 part of Britain and the rest of Europe in the Miocene period. 

 The young of nearly all species of deer except the elk, the rein- 

 deer, and the sambur are spotted with white, the spots sometimes 

 running into horizontal stripes, and these white markings remain 

 permanently, or occur seasonably, in not a few kinds of deer. 



It is probable that the deer, like so many other groups, 

 originated in Asia, where at the present day the most primitive 

 and archaic representatives of this group are still found living. 

 But they made their appearance in Europe at an early period, the 

 very beginning of the Miocene, the first forms, of course, being 

 hornless, and allied to such types as Hydropotes of China, and the 

 Muntjac deer of India. The earliest type of antlered deer to 



1 At the same time antlered females, fertile and able to breed, do occur 

 in not infrequent instances, scarcely to be called abnormalities, in other 

 genera, such as the roe and even the red deer. " Abnormality " would rather 

 cover those instances of aged or unsexed females which produce stunted 

 antlers, just as aged female pheasants assume male plumage or aged women 

 grow beards. 



