CERVIDIE, seevi-de, the deer family, a group of ruminant ungulates, including, besides the typical deer, the reindeer, the musk-deer and others. The most noticeable characteris tic of the entire group is the presence, in the males, or ubucks,p of branched appendages to the skull, called antlers. These are, however, lacking in certain species, which, despite this fact, are very evidently closely related to the antlered deer. Only among the reindeer do the females have antlers. The antlered animals shed these ornaments annually and develop new ones. (For growth and reproduction of these, see ANTLERS). Other peculiarities of the family are anatomical; the most noticeable is the ab sence (except in Moschus) of a gall-bladder, and the presence in all of two lachrymal ducts, one visible outside the eye in the gtear-bag* (Crumen). The subfamily Cervince, with sev eral genera and about 60 species, embraces the typical deer; the subfamily Moschinte includes only the musk-deer (q.v.), separated because it
is hornless, retains the gall-bladder and has no crumen. The musk-deer is confined to the Himalayan region. Otherwise deer occur in all parts of the world except Australia and Africa. Indications of kinship to his race occur in the fossil Leptomeryx of the Oligocene, but the oldest certain types are of Miocene Age, and were small creatures somewhat akin to the modern muntjacs, but totally hornless. "Not until the middle of the Miocene has a deer (Dicroceras) been found with horns, and they are bifid, and stand upon a long pedicel — also muntjac-like. Later came true deer with branching horns which culminated in a Euro pean species with twelve points on each antler —the celebrated 'giant stagy of the Irish peat bogs and similar places, whose palmated antlers spread 10 to 12 feet from tip to tip; it was, in fact, a huge fallow deer.° (See DEER). Con sult Flower and Lydekker, 'Mammals> (Lon don 1891).