DEER. 239 



would have required all the talent of a palseontologist to have 

 rendered it credible. Not only is this enormous mass of bone 

 annually shed and renewed, but immediately after its com- 

 pletion it becomes an absolutely dead structure, having no 

 connection with the vascular system of its owner. Soon after 

 the annual shedding of the antlers, there appear on the skull 

 of a Stag a pair of velvety knobs, with a large number of blood- 

 vessels traversing their tender and sensitive skin. These bony 

 knobs grow very rapidly, and soon begin to branch into a 

 larger or smaller number of tines according to the age and 

 species of the Deer to which they belong. When the new 

 antlers are fully formed, they develop at the base a rough ring 

 of bone termed the "burr," which constricts and finallystops the 

 supply of blood, thus causing the skin, or " velvet,'' covering 

 the antler to dry up ; this dead velvet subsequently either 

 peeling off by itself or being rubbed off by the animal against 

 the stems or branches of trees. In young Stags the antlers are 

 very simple, and in those species in which they are much 

 branched in the adult, they gradually increase in complexity 

 with advancing age, although this annual increasing com- 

 plexity is not so regular as is often stated to be the case. 



The Family is divided into a large number of genera, two of 

 which are still represented in the British Isles, where there is 

 evidence that a third also existed within the historic period. 

 Although distributed over the greater part of the world, with 

 the exception of Australasia, Deer are quite unknown in Africa 

 south of the Sahara Desert. 



THE TYPICAL DEER. GENUS CERVUS. 

 Cervus, Linn., Syst. Nat. ed. 12, vol. i. p. 92 (1766). 



Antlers rising at an acute angle from the middle line of the 

 forehead, large, and either rounded or flattened ; skull without 

 prominent longitudinal ridges on the forehead, and with the 



