NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 331 
The above account is from the pen of Mr. J. Clarke, wlio has 
published a " Treatise on the Growth of the Horns of the Red 
Deer." (A. P. Wood, Bookseller, Barnstable, 1866.) 
FIG 7. — RED DEER, EIGHT YEARS OLD. 
Spiracula of Deer, p. 45. — Mr. Henry Sawyer, head keeper 
of Richmond Park, writes me : — " I cannot think that there 
can be any respiration from the cavity in the deer's head, 
below the eye ; the skin covering the cavity is of the same nature 
apparently as the other part of the skin, and it adheres very 
closely to the bone, so that there is great difficulty in skin- 
ning it without cutting the skin ; there is certainly no orifice in 
the skin. This view is strengthened by the example which I 
gave in my treatise on deer, where a stag, closely pressed, ran into 
the water, and in his anxiety to hide himself, let the Avater into his 
nostrils and was drowned. This my father was an eye-witness of. 
If this cavity would have supplied the respiration, this need not 
have happened, as undouT)tedly he kept his eyes open. Deer 
