
NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 553 
: Scarcely half so long, projecting forward from the brow, and terminatlng 
n avery sharp point. It gives a considerable advantage to its possessor 
over the common buck. Besides enabling him to run more swiftly 
through the thick woods and underbrush (eriy hunter keen ind does 
run much 
armed with their cumbrous antlers), the spike-horn is a more effective 
weapon than the common antler. With this gegen. the Spike-horn 
Bucks are gaining upon the common buc n time, entirely 
a supercede them in the Adirondacks. “ein eA art M t Spike-horn 
Buck was mega an accidental freak of nature. But his spike-horns gave 
him an advantage, and enabled him to propagate his peculiarity. His 
descendants, "gei like advantage, have propagated the peculiarity in 
a constantly increasing ratio, tin they are slowly crowding the Antlered 
Deer from the region they in 
Suppose this had begun several hundred years ago, and the process had 
been completed before the first white man penetrated the wilds of north- 
g 
of deer, besides the Moose and Caribou, only the Spike-horn. Would he 
have hesitated to have pronounced it a distinct species, and to have named 
it as such? And would not naturalists everywhere have followed him? 
Yet the Spike-horn Buck is but an accidental variety of the C. Virginia- 
nus. Is it probable that the Black-tailed Deer is a more distinct species? 
How many changes as great as that from the common Deer to the Spike- 
horn Buck would be necessary in order to produce an animal as different 
'as the Elk, or even the Moose? — ADIRONDACK. 
OF THE ROCKS - —AD article in the August number of the NAT- 
eis Ae Lo) Pi ee ee en MEE S Cee a ee ee a, 
nies TOEIC: vu pa 







Crystalization of snow-flakes and of certain mineral substances, and 
Which he claims the ae to ah by a new theory of his own 
With no reference to his theory, and no desire to criticise the author 
unjustly, I merely wish to state that zodlogists have long had what is to 

Which enter into the structure of the retina of the eye is spherical, a 
that they receive their hexagonal outline by impinging against each oe 
in their erowded condition. So also the plates of all plated Radiates 
receive their polygonal patina: from the same cause. Mon normal out- 
line is cireular and undivided, evidence of which may be seen in the inner 
circular lines "pim the very figures of a plate of Archeocidaris which he 
reproduces from Hall, and which by the way is not a crinoid. These 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. III. 70 
