114 



MAMMALIA. 



" This Species displays great enmity towards the ratdesnake, which 

 enemy they attack and destroy with sino^ular dexterity and courage; 

 when the Deer discover one of these reptiles, they leap into the air 

 to a great distance above it, and descend with their four feet brought 

 together, forming a solid square, and light on the snake with their 

 whole weight, when they immediately bound away; they return and 

 repeat the same manctuvres until their enemy is completely 

 destroyed." '•' 



.lilt /its. 



The branching and gracefully curved antlers which adorn the heads 

 of the bucks, and contribute so largely to the elegant appearance of 

 the animal, are shed and renewed every )'ear. Their growth is so 

 rapid that the full size is usually reached in about three months, and * 

 they fall off about four months afterward. They are first seen with 

 us, as a rule, about the middle of May. appearing as soft, dark-col- 

 ored and rapidly elongating vascular excrescences. They harden 

 from below upwards, and by the time the growth is complete all but 

 the tips is well ossified. The soft, skin-like material, called the vel- 

 vet, with which they are covered, now begins to peel off in irregular 

 strips and shreds, and by the early part or middle of September the 

 horns are generally clean. The v(!lvet does not come away of itself, 

 but is rubbed and scraped off against shrubs and small trees, as if 

 the anders itched at the period of maturity. The Hon. Judge Caton, 

 of Ottawa. Illinois, whose facilities for observation in this field have 

 rarely been equalled, makes the following statement, which will, by 

 many, be received with surprise: "The evidence, derived from 

 a very great multitude of observations, made through a course of 

 years, is conclusive that nature prompts the animal to denude its ant- 

 lers of their covering, at a certain period of its growth, while yet 

 the blood has as free access to that covering as it ever had."t 



* Fauna Americana, 1825, p. 242. 



f The Antelope and Deer of America. By [olin Dean Caton, 1,L. 1)., 1877, p. 172. 



