, 
352 ' THE ANTLERS OF DEER. 
months after the velvet has been discarded, while in aged animals À 
after that time, the plasma principally passes up into the antler. 1 
In the meantime, the lower extremity of the antler, that con- 
vex part below the burr, which sits in the concave seat whichis 
the top of the pedicel, has been solidifying much more rapidly 
than the internal portion above; and before the cells above had 
become too much filled up, the lower convex extremity, which, : 
during the active growth of the antler, was traversed by the canals 
of all the internal blood-vessels leading to or from the antler, 
becomes more and more compact till finally these canals become 
completely filled up and the circulation above cut off. This lower 
crust now much resembles the articular bone terminating the i 
internal bones at the articulations. It resembles it in its extreme 
solidity and larger granules, which any one can see on the rough- i 
ened surface by inspecting any deers antler which has been ; 
dropped from the living animal, for they are well exposed by the | 
absorbent process to be presently described: : 
While nature has been doing this work another and a very 
anomalous work has been progressing in an internal bone. 
The pedicel, which during the active growth of the antler was 
open and porous, allowing the internal blood-vessels to pass 
through it freely, so, soon as the great demand for nutriment had 
ceased, commenced a new deposit of laminæ in those canals, which 
before the commencement of that new growth had been enlarged 
by absorption, until the blood-vessels passing through them are 
collapsed, and so the circulation through them arrested. This has 
become necessary in order to furnish a strong firm base for the 
antler while it is used as a weapon of warfare, which was not 
required during the growth of the antler, when the pedicel was 
spongy and weak. This annual destruction and reconstruction 
on- 
- 
of bone tissue nowhere else occurs in the internal animal ey 
omy, and nowhere else do exigencies require it. 
Now that all sources of nutriment, both external and internal, 
have been cut off from the antler, it dies and becomes & foreign — 
body on the living animal, and as nature cannot tolerate this i 
a great length of time she has provided the means for discarding 
the inert body and presently sets those means in motion. One 
_ of the three systems of blood-vessels first describell has not yet 
been destroyed. Those leading from the periosteum into the al 
ticulation still penetrate the seam although they cannot penetrate 
* 
