ANTLERS, the weapons borne upon the head of a male deer during the breeding sea son. They are an outgrowth of true bone sup ported upon protuberances from the crown of the skull, called pedicels. As the spring ap proaches, the hairy skin with which these are covered becomes highly vascular and swollen with blood and serum carrying lime salts. This grows outward and gradually assumes the form of the antler, characteristic of the species, which for a time is in a soft and vascular state, and covered with what hunters call °velvet." There is continually deposited within this growth the substance of bone, which fills and solidifies the structure from the centre outward, until in the course of four or five months all has become solid, the outer skin shrinks and dries and presently falls or is rubbed off. These antlers remain firm upon the head and useful as weapons until the middle of the following win ter, when they become loosened and fall off. The process is repeated the following spring, and the antlers are thus lost and replaced annually as long as the stag lives. In the deer, with the single exception of the reindeer, ant lers are worn only by the males and are a secondary sexual character. That they are as sociated with the reproductive function, says Beddard, is shown by their being shed after the period of rut; and also by the stunting effect upon the horns which any injury to the reproductive glands produces. Various degrees of degeneration are to be seen in the antlers of captive deer resulting from varying degrees and periods of gelding.
The sport of stag-hunting has preserved a set of ancient terms, mostly of French origin in the Middle Ages, designating the different parts of the antler and the successive stages of growth, and these have come to stand for a deer of a certain age or condition. They were all derived from and particularly applicable to the European red deer (Cervus elephar), which more than any other species is preserved for hunting in Europe. The nomenclature is sum
marized as follows in
Natural His tory,' Vol III: °In the common red deer, in the spring of the year following its birth, the antlers are nothing more than straight, conical and unbranched (beams,' the animal being then known as a
In the following spring the antler has, besides the 'beam,' a small branch from its base, directed forward, known as the