Red Deer 77 



last feature is, however, by no means constant, and in the handsome head 

 represented in Fig. 21, the brow- and bez-tine are of approximately equal 

 length. Out of four line specimens obtained by Mr. E. N. Buxton, of 

 Knighton, Buckhurst Hill, from Tartarow, in the Galician Carpathians, 

 two have the bez-tine very short, in the third there is a very short bez on 

 one side only, and in the fourth this tine is absent on both sides. On the 

 other hand, in the seven-pointed Hungarian antlers from the collection of 

 Viscount Powerscourt shown in Fig. 3, the brow- and bez-tine are of 

 approximately equal length, so that it is evident that the shortness of the 

 latter can in no wise be regarded as invariably distinctive of the race. At 

 the same time it must be remembered that Hungary is on the borderland 

 between the habitats of the two races ; and it is therefore to be expected 

 that antlers from this district would exhibit intermediate characters. 

 Indeed, it is only provisionally that Lord Powerscourt's specimen is 

 assigned to the eastern race. 



Antlers seldom, if ever, attain the extreme complexity of the typical red 

 deer as exemplified by old German examples (Fig. 18) or specimens from 

 the English peat or Irish bogs ; and Fitzinger gives the number of points 

 on the crown as not exceeding two or three. But a specimen from the 

 North-Western Caucasus, presented by Mr. St. George Littledale to the 

 British Museum, has eight points, and Mr. Ward records another with 

 eleven from the same range. Mr. Buxton also has a many-pointed specimen, 

 although the palmation of the crown indicates that it is somewhat abnormal. 

 In the Caucasus this deer is known as the ollen, and Mr. St. George Little- 

 dale 1 has published the following remarks regarding its characters and antlers. 

 " When I hunted the ollen," he writes, " I had no notion that I should ever 

 be called upon to carefully discriminate between them and their kin in 

 other countries, so that I am obliged to rely upon my memory for any 

 points of difference, and memory only suggests that whereas the wapiti 

 rarely (if ever) has cups on his antlers, the ollen royal has the peculiar cup- 

 formation as often as the red deer. Again, the call of the Caucasian stag 

 in the rutting-season (September) is similar to that of the Scotch stag, and 

 does not resemble the weird whistle of the wapiti. In size both of body and 

 antler the ollen comes very near to the great American stag." With regard 

 to the cupping of the antlers, the plate annexed to Mr. Littledale's note 



1 Badminton Library, Big Game Shooting, vol. i. p. 36. 



