Royal Physical Society. 363 



have, however, met with a distortion by which they have a 

 curious bend in the middle, as shown in this figure. The 



Fig. 3. 



cause, whatever it may have been, has affected them both 

 equally, which is not usually the case where horns are dis- 

 torted — it generally happening that if one horn is injured so 

 that it takes reduced dimensions, the nourishment which was 

 meant for it is diverted to the other horn ; and we have the two 

 horns characterized, one by defect, and the other by excess. 

 It is not easy to say what may have been the cause of this 

 curious distortion. It may be that the poor animal, when 

 its horns were still soft and young, got entangled among brush 

 wood ; and that here is the silent evidence of long struggles 

 on the part of the animal, and of perhaps days of famine, be- 

 fore it succeeded in freeing itself from the bonds which held 

 it. Or it may merely be a distortion consequent upon the 

 old age of the animal, for we often find the horns in old deer 

 stunted and distorted, although it is not usual to find them 

 so symmetrically disfigured. It will be observed that this 

 head wants the triangular ploughshare in front, but as it is 

 obviously an abnormal and exceptional head, this want goes 

 for nothing in the question of species. One of the other heads 

 sent by Mr Hargrave is a young one, as shown by the teeth, 

 and has not yet got the fan-shaped ploughshare, which, like 

 other antlers, only appears after the animal has acquired a 

 certain age. It is unnecessary, moreover, to say, that in the 

 observations I have previously made as to the form of the horns 



