394 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. VoL. XXXIV. 
quent to the appearance of reliable printed statements concerning the 
true facts of the case. 
The second mention of this peculiarity of the American Antelope 
was made in 1858, in Cassin’s Report of the United States Exploring 
Expedition. Little attention seems to have been paid, however, to 
the brief observations “ published there. 
The first accurate observations on the annual shedding of the horns 
of the American Antelope were published in 1865. They were made 
on a specimen living in the gardens of the London Zoological Society. 
Several years before, however, in 1858, Dr. C. A. Canfield, of 
Monterey, California, had made very careful observations on the © 
deciduous character of the horns, as shown in wild and semidomesti- 
cated animals. His notes were set forth at considerable length in a 
letter addressed to Prof. 8. F. Baird, Secretary of the Smithsonian 
Institution. That any Antelope annually shed and renewed its horns 
appeared so improbable that the truth of the contents of Doctor 
Canfield’s letter was evidently doubted, for it was not published 
until after the appearance of the observations made on the living 
specimen in London. In the following “year, 1866, this letter was 
published in the proceedings of the London Zoological Society.° 
Since then many articles on the subject have appeared in various 
publications. (See Bibliography.) 
DESCRIPTION OF THE GROWTH AND SHEDDING OF THE HORNS. 
The growth and shedding of the horns in males may be briefly out- 
lined as follows: The kids are born during the spring and are of 
course at that time hornless. By the middle of summer the first horns 
begin to appear, being small and conical and concealed in the hair of 
the forehead. They reach a length of nearly an inch by autumn. 
Early in the winter they drop off, leaving small knobs projecting 
from the frontal region about a half inch long and covered with 
hairs. Inside of a week these knobs are again covered with a small 
cap of horn. This horn increases in size from the base, for a year, at- 
taining a length of nearly six inches. The characteristic prong is 
not present at this age. In the early winter these horns drop off, 
leaving horn-cores about an inch and a half in length, covered, as in 
the first year, with a hairy skin. Horns immediately form on their 
tips, and in addition, at the base and in front of the horn-core, an- 
other point of horn forms, which becomes the prong. By a gradual — 
conversion of the epidermis of the skin covering the horn-core into 
4}Poctor Marsh in Pickering’s notes in Cassin’s U. S. Explor. HExped., 
Mamm., Ornith., 1858, p. 638. e 
b A.D. Bartlett, Proc. Zool. Soe. London, 1865, pp. 718-725, figs. 1-4. 
€c, A. Canfield, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1866, pp. 105-110. 
