Antlers 



9 



record of their antler-development is quoted by Mr. Gordon Cameron :— 

 " One of the stags continued to improve till he was nine years old, after 

 which he remained stationary till fifteen, when he became diseased and was 

 shot. Two of them went on improving till they were eleven years old, 

 and then remained stationary till they were sixteen, when they became 

 diseased and were shot ; the fourth went on improving till he was thirteen 

 years old, when he was killed in a fight." 



Peculiarities in antlers are reproduced year after year in the same stag 

 with remarkable regularity ; red deer or wapiti with badly formed brow- 



Fig. 3. — Antler of Caspian Red Deer, from a Hungarian specimen in the collection of Viscount 

 Powerscourt. Counting from the skull upwards, the first tine is the brow, the second the bez, 

 and the third the trez, above which come the surroyals, or crown. 



tines, or fallow deer with an extra tine, reproducing such singularities with 

 extreme constancy. This, among many other more convincing reasons, 

 indicates the importance of antlers as a basis of classification of the deer 

 tribe. And although these appendages were to a certain extent put in the 

 background by the late Sir Victor Brooke, Mr. A. Gordon Cameron 

 seems to have successfully proved that they have the right to a very fore- 

 most place in the scheme of classification. As they are the most easily 

 recognised feature in a deer's organisation, their adoption as a basis of 



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