. The deer of all lands; a history of the family Cervidæ living and extinct. Deer; Deer, Fossil; Cervidae; Cervidae, Fossil. 246 American Deer brockets are not the ancestral types of" the American deer is evident from the tact that remains of these are unknown in North America, and that species with complex antlers of the type of those of the marsh-deer were already in existence at or about the time communication was established between the northern and southern halves of the New World ; remains of such species occurring in the Pliocene beds of Monte Hermoso, in Argentina. Rather must the
. The deer of all lands; a history of the family Cervidæ living and extinct. Deer; Deer, Fossil; Cervidae; Cervidae, Fossil. 246 American Deer brockets are not the ancestral types of" the American deer is evident from the tact that remains of these are unknown in North America, and that species with complex antlers of the type of those of the marsh-deer were already in existence at or about the time communication was established between the northern and southern halves of the New World ; remains of such species occurring in the Pliocene beds of Monte Hermoso, in Argentina. Rather must the brockets, as has already been pointed out by Mr. A. Gordon Cameron, be regarded as degraded, or arrested, types of the group. A large amount of misconception has arisen with regard to the structure of the antlers of this group. In 1872 the late Dr. Gray rightly termed the single upright prong arising from the inner side of the lower part of the beam of the antlers of the Virginian deer the " sub-basal snag," but this I ^1 snag Sir Victor Brooke incorrectly identified with the brow-tine of the « typical Old World Jeer. This error has been pointed out by Mr. A. Gordon Cameron in the following words :—" These characteristic tines have nothing in common with the true brows of Old World types, and rise vertically from the inner side of the beam, between the coronet and the main furcation, usually converg- ing at the apex. They are subject, in common with the antlers that produce them, to all kinds of eccentricities, are frequently forked and sub-palmate ; and appear to bear an inverse relation to the calibre of the posterior prong. They develop with the second antlers of C. kucurus, but only with the later antlers of C. macrotis" Regarding the different forms assumed by the antlers of the group, the same observer writes as follows :—" In the dominant type of the north the. Fig. 68.—Side view of Antlers of Virginian Deer, from a specimen in the Briti
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