The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1881-09-02
THE DEER's .ANTLERS.


Another of Darwtu's Peculiar Scte"ttnc
sbelacitOns
The historical development of antlers
in the deer tribe is very marked. While
the group was still young and dominant,
with the open glass-clad tertiary plains
all before it and with plenty of elbow
room to spread and multiply, it had as yet
no weapons of offense Of any kind. But
as the races grew thicker and more nu-
merous and as space failed the younger
generation-for deer like men, are subject
to the memorable logic of the Malthu-
sians-the fathers of the herd began to
fight among themselves for the possess
sion of the does, and only the strongest
survived to become the parents of future
deerkind. Butting naturally produces
hard bosses or proturberances OF some
sort, and in the ancestral deer these pro-
turberances took the shape of bony pro-
jections on the forehead. Again, those
deer which had the most marked and
most pointed projections would best van
quish their rivals, and so fare best in the
struggle for their kinds. Their descend
ants would inherit their peculiarities
with more or less variation and would
similarly be selected by the law of battle
in accordance with their fighting powers
and the fitness of their weapons. And
this probability, set forth priori by
Mr.. Darwin, exactly tallies with the geo.
logical record as interpreted by Prof.
Boyd Dawkins. The very vague and un-
specialized deer of the lower miocene
period had no antlers at all they were
somewhat like musk deer without the
tusks, or like young fawns in their first
summer. But in the mid miocene ant
lers make their first appearance as mere
short pointed knobs next, they develop
a single side tine and in the upper mio-
Gene they come out as fully evolved as in
our modern species. Every intermediate
stage can be traced between the mere
nascent boss like that of budding roe
in our own day, and the many branched
headpiece of the existing reindeer. In
deed, one late tertiary species had pair
of wonderfully intricate antlers which
far surpassed in completely those of any
living elk but, like many other highly
specialized creatures, this over-devel-
oped type seems to have fallen prey to
the great extinct carnivores of the same
period. Before the advent of man, many
such high types existed, and they may
perhaps have been partly destroyed by
his monopolizing all the most open and
desirable plains as his special hunting
grounds. For we now know that man is
certainly quarternary, and probably a
tertiary genus as well and, even in his
lowest and humblest form, his intelli-
gence must have made him from the
very first dominant race and the real
lord of creation.
1t Is interesting to note, too, that the
historical evolution of antlers in the deer
tribe is exactly paralleled by the modern
evolution of antlers in every individual
red deer. In the first year a stag has no
horns at all, and is technically known as
a calf. In the second year he puts forth
pair of rounded bosses, and Is there
fore called knobber III the slang of the
gillies. With his third year the knobs
fall off, and are replaced by longer horns,
called days, while the stag himself is
now known as q brocket. Thus, year
after year, the growing deer reproduces
one stage after another of the ancestral
development, till at length the top of the
horn expands into q broad crown, and
the beast is then finally dubbed hart or
"stag of ten, )" from the number of tines
on each of his antlers. 1t would be quite
possible to pair the cast horns of each
year tolerably exactly with correspond
ing adult horns from the successive ter
tiary strata. Every deer in fact recapit-
ulates in his own person the whole evo-
luton of his race, the antlers of each
successive year being different, not only
in size but in form and arrangement as
well, from those of all previous seasons.
From the Pal MAI Gazette.