326 BRITISH MAMMALS 



contain liquid. The longest of these prongs starting from the 

 cup is often turned more or less sharply downwards, and this and 

 other prongs starting from the cup may bifurcate. It is in this 

 development of the cup that the red deer differ from the other 

 members of the same group, and, indeed, from all other deer. 

 In the simplest form of development this cup is merely the 

 original bifurcation of tines, one or other of the terminal prongs 

 of which may again bifurcate. But in modern German and 

 English park stags, and, above all, in the horns of stags of 

 Great Britain and Ireland in Prehistoric or early historic times, 

 the development of the cup reaches such an extravagance that 

 it may give rise to as many as eleven points, possibly more. 

 Early British stags often exhibited a great tendency to flattening 

 out or palmation (accompanied by shortness of beam) in their 

 antlers. The deer in Sussex parks seem to have a marked 

 tendency towards palmation. 



Stags' horns vary a good deal in their angle of divergence 

 from the median line of the skull and neck. Of course, the 

 most primitive type of antlers, in common with the horns 

 of other primitive ruminants, would grow more or less parallel 

 with the line of the neck. But as soon as specialisation 

 begins in the deer, as well as in oxen, so much divergence 

 may take place that, as in the case of the elk or bull or musk 

 ox, the horns may grow out at right angles to the median 

 line of the skull and neck. In the case of the red deer 

 the divergence is hardly such as to constitute a right angle, 

 but there is a good deal of variation in this respect, as neces- 

 sarily in the measure of the span between the extremities of 

 the horns. The span of the widest antlers found in Britain is 

 approximately 5 ft. It is the measurement (allowing for restora- 

 tion) of a most remarkable head found in Derbyshire (Prehistoric), 

 and now in the Natural History Museum, London.^ The 



^ This, which is one of the most remarkable stags' heads found in Britain, 

 was lying about unrecognised in the huge unsorted collection of horns in the 

 basement below the Natural History Museum, and its unearthing and exhibition 

 are due to the efforts of Sir Edmund Loder and Mr. J. G. Millais. 



