136-38 INDIAN TERTIARY AND POST-TERTIARY VERTEBRATA. 
to me that such was very possibly the case, unless they were covered merely by 
skin, as in the giraffe. 
With regard to the posterior horns, Dr. Ealconer 1 remarked that they are 
branched and palmated as in the deer, but that they have no 4 burr,’ and that they 
are hollow at the base, a combination of characters not found in any cervine antlers. 
He concludes that they “ were at least three-branched and at the same time 
ca^comed.” 
Dr. Murie comes to the conclusion that the hinder horns most nearly resembled 
those of the American prong-buck (. Antilocapra ), being probably provided with 
separate horny sheaths on the points, connected by a common hairy covering. He 
concludes that this horn was endued “with certain external aspects peculiar to 
those of deer ; a horn likewise possessing attributes belonging to antelopes and the 
Bovidce ; a horn differing in every respect from that of the cameleopards ” (sic.) 
Now, without committing myself to Dr. Murie ’s views as to the presence or 
absence of a distinct horny covering, it appears to me, as admitted by Dr. Murie, 
that there is a very considerable affinity to the structure of the cervine antler in the 
horns of the Sivatherium. This is especially manifest in the specimen figured by 
Sir W. E. Baker, which in the form of the large grooves for blood-vessels most 
strikingly resembles the antler of the so-called Irish elk (. Megaceros ). It appears 
to me probable that the horns of the sivathere were of a kind of generalised, type 
between an antler and a sheathed horn. 
Position of the genus and its allies. — In concluding his memoir, Dr. Murie 
came to the conclusion that the sivathere must be placed in a distinct family, and 
that it showed affinities with several distinct groups of ruminants, but that it 
was on the whole most nearly allied to Antilocapra. He admits that it presents 
some affinity to the deer ; but says that its only affinity with the giraffe (which is 
rightly termed a “ modified deer ”) is in the structure of its molar teeth. By a 
most unaccountable oversight Dr. Murie entirely omits all mention of the genus 
Helladotherium which had been long previously described by M. Gaudry as a genus 
connecting the giraffe with the sivathere. 
I shall now proceed to show how my views on this subject differ from those 
of Dr. Murie. In the first place it may, I think, be taken for granted that no 
one would question the very intimate relationship existing between Sivatherium, 
Bramatlierium, and Bydaspitherium, and we have already seen that the teeth of the 
two last-named genera cannot be distinguished from those of Helladotherium, 
which were originally described as belonging to Camelopardalis, while the skull 
was described as the female Sivatherium. Eurther, in no ruminants, except those 
of the group under consideration, the giraffe, the Irish elk, the true elk, and some of 
the other deer, are the ‘ lobes ’ of the molars placed obliquely to the long axis of the 
teeth so as to overlap one another, while their enamel has a peculiar rugose struc- 
ture, most marked in the sivathere, and least so in the round-antlered deer. In 
"PaL Mem.,” Vol. I, p. 268. 
