i6 
MAMMALIA. 
“ This species displays great enmity towards the rattlesnake, which 
enemy they attack and destroy with singular dexterity and courage ; 
when the Deer discover one of these reptiles, they leap into the air 
to a great distance above it, and descend with their four feet brought 
together, forming a solid square, and light on the snake with their 
whole weight, when they immediately bound away; they return and 
repeat the same manoeuvres until their enemy is completely 
destroyed.” * 
Antlers. 
The branching and gracefully curved antlers which adorn the heads 
of the bucks, and contribute so largely to the elegant appearance of 
the animal, are shed and renewed every year. Their growth is so 
rapid that the full size is usually reached in about three months, and 
they fall off about four months afterward. They are first seen with 
us, as a rule, about the middle of May, appearing as soft, dark-col- 
ored and rapidly elongating vascular excrescences. They harden 
from below upwards, and by the time the growth is complete all but 
the tips is well ossified. The soft, skin-like material, called the vel- 
vet, with which they are covered, now begins to peel off in irregular 
strips and shreds, and by the early part or middle of September the 
horns are generally clean. The velvet does not come away of itself, 
but is rubbed and scraped off against shrubs and small trees, as if 
the antlers itched at the period of maturity. The Hon. Judge Caton, 
of Ottawa, Illinois, whose facilities for observation in this field have 
rarely been equalled, makes the following statement, which will, by 
many, be received with surprise ; “The evidence, derived from 
a very great multitude of observations, made through a course of 
years, is conclusive that nature prompts the animal to denude its ant- 
lers of their covering, at a certain period of its growth, while yet 
the blood has as free access to that covering as it ever had.' f 
* Fauna Americana, 1825, p. 242. 
f The Antelope and Deer of America. By John Dean Caton, LL. D., 1877, p. 172. 
