June, 1891. 
ANIMAL PEDIGREES. 
127 
The Echinoids, and other groups of Echinoderms as well, 
have been worked at from the same standpoint, and with the 
same results, by Neumayr, in whom we have recently lost 
one of the most gifted and painstaking of palaeontologists. 
As an example of the extreme value, in certain cases, of 
a single fossil specimen, the singular fossil bird, Archaeop¬ 
teryx, may be referred to. In recent birds the metacarpal 
bones of the wing are firmly fused with one another and 
with the distal row of carpal or wrist bones, but in develop¬ 
ment the metacarpals are at first and for some time distinct. 
The first specimen of Archaeopteryx discovered, which is 
now in the British Museum, showed that in it this distinct¬ 
ness was preserved in the adult, i.e., that what is now an 
embryonic character in recent birds was formerly an adult one. 
Another very excellent illustration of the parallelism 
between the palaeontological and the developmental series is 
afforded by the antlers of deer, which, as is well known, are 
shed annually, and grow again of increased size and com¬ 
plexity in each succeeding year. In the case of the red deer, 
Cervus elaphus, the antlers are shed in the spring, usually 
between the months of February and April; during the 
summer the new antlers sprout out, and, growing rapidly, 
attain their full size at the pairing season in August or Sep¬ 
tember : they persist throughout the winter, and are shed in 
the following spring. 
The antlers of the first year are small and unbranched ; 
those of the second year are larger and branched; in the 
antlers of the third year three tynes or points are present; 
in the fourth year four points, and so on until the full size of 
the antler and the full number of points are attained. 
The geological history of antlers has been worked out by 
Professor Gaudrv and by Professor Boyd Dawkins, and is of 
great interest. In the Lower Meiocene and earlier deposits 
no antlers have been found. In the genus Procervulus from 
the Middle Meiocene, a pair of small, erect, branched, but 
non-deciduous antlers were present, intermediate in many 
respects between the antlers of deer and the horns of antelopes. 
From slightly later deposits a stag, Cervus dicroceros, has 
been found with forked deciduous antlers, which, however, 
do not appear to have had more that two points. In Upper 
Meiocene times antlered ruminants were more abundant, and 
the antlers themselves larger and more complex : while from 
Pleiocene deposits very numerous fossils have been obtained 
showing a gradual increase in the size of the antlers and the 
number of their branches, down to the present time. 
Antlers therefore are, geologically considered, very recent 
acquisitions: at their first appearance they were small, and 
either simple or branched once only; while in succeeding 
ages they gradually increased in size and in complexity. 
