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1887] _ Hornless Ruminants. 739° 
cene. The cervine antler of the upper meiocene becomes more 
complex, but is still small and erect, like that of the roe. In the 
pleiocene it becomes longer and longer, and altogether more - 
complex and differentiated, some forms, such as the C. dicranios, 
being the most complicated known either in the living or fossil 
state. These successive changes are analogous to those which 
are to be observed in the development of the living deer,—which 
begins with a single point, and increases the number of tines till 
the limit is reached. It is obvious from the progressive diminu- 
tion in size, and complexity of the antlers in tracing them back 
from the pleiocene into the mid-meiocene of Europe, that in the 
latter period we are approaching the zero of antler development. 
; In the lower meiocene Professor Boyd-Dawkins has failed to 
l 
; 
meet with evidence that the deer possėssed any antlers. 
Thus in deer the polled head was the condition of the family 
during its embryo age of development; as it is in the living in- 
dividual to-day. This was during the upper eocene period, 
“when generalized or ancestral forms of deer and antelope” were 
universally of the hornless type, whose associates were, also, 
tuskless Suidæ and hornless. Rhinoceri. 
_ Antelopes—The indications, as just pointed out, of the earliest 
forms of antelopes are that in such stage they were unpossessed 
of horns, Darwin notes that, “with the antelopes a graduated 
Series can. be formed, beginning with the species the females 
= which are completely destitute of horns, passing to those 
having small rudimentary to those which have fairly well- 
biek horns, to those in which they are of equal size in both 
Ras. : 
T A form between the deciduous solid-horned and the non- 
q deciduous hollow-horned has been pointed out by Professor 
Gaudy, 
oh Position from which the horns spring is a chief point to 
_, 1 antelopes, as also that the bony nuclei of the horns are 
“sand solid, while in the other Ruminants to be noticed they 
are cellular and communicate with the frontal sinuses. 
3 would be interesting to make an anatomical comparisom 
the og horns of the giraffes, the rosenstock of hornless deer, 
diment “stock of antelopes, and the subcutaneous osseous ru- 
Permit Sometimes felt in hornless cattle, but space does not 
