78 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



differences in results. This excess of animal 

 matter seems necessary to give the antlers 

 elasticity and strength, and adapt them to the 

 purpose for which they are designed. 



What becomes of the old horns is a question 

 which is often asked, the inquirers usually averring, 

 and with some truth, that they are seldom or never 

 to be seen lying about. The explanation of this is 

 really not far to seek. In the first place, it must 

 often happen that the horns are dropped in out-of- 

 the-way places, amongst underwood, or in heather, 

 where they are lost to sight, and seldom discovered 

 unless by a systematic search for them, or by 

 accident. In the next place, park-keepers and 

 foresters keep a pretty sharp look-out for them in 

 the course of their daily rounds, knowing well their 

 value to the cutlers for knife handles, and to the 

 saddlers for whip handles. And in the third place, 

 the deer themselves help to get rid of them by 

 eating them. The question is asked from time to 

 time whether this can be true, and whether it is 

 possible that deer can gnaw at all in the proper 

 sense of the word, having no incisor teeth in the 

 upper jaw, but only a hard callous pad, against 

 which the lower incisors can only cut off grass and 

 leaves in the same way that cows do with similar 

 dentition. But they have powerful molars, or 

 grinding teeth, quite strong enough to bite and 

 break off boughs with, and to gnaw or crunch up 

 bones ; and there can be no doubt that they use 

 them for that purpose. 



Scrope, in his Days of Deer-stalking, states 



