would out-rank their bovine cousins by a full half of the Miocene
period, and the study of fossils onward from this early beginning
presents few clearer lines of evidence supporting modern theories
respecting the development of species, than is shown in the increasing
size and complexity of the antlers in succeeding geological ages, from
the simple fork of the middle Miocene to those with three prongs of the
late Miocene, the four-pronged of the Pliocene, and finally to the
many-branched shapes of the Pleistocene and the present age. Now it is
further true that each one of these types is represented today in the
mature antlers of existing deer, from the small South American species
with a simple spike, up to the wapiti and red deer carrying six or eight
points, and still more significant is it that the whole story is
recapitulated in the growth of each individual of the higher races. The
earliest cervine animals known seem to have had no antlers at all, a
stage to which the fawn of the year corresponds; the subsequent normal
addition in the life-history, of a tine for each year of growth until
the mature antler is reached, answering with exactness to the stages of
advance shown in the development-history of the race. A year of
individual life is the symbol of a geological period of
progression. This is a marvelous record, of which we may
say--paraphrasing with Huxley the well-known saying of Voltaire--"if it
had not already existed, evolution must have been invented to explain."

The least technical, and for the present purpose the most useful of the
characters distinguishing existing deer from all of the bovine stock,
lies in the antlers, which are solid, of bony substance, and are
annually shed. They are present in the males of all species except the
Chinese water deer, and the very divergent musk-deer, which probably
should not be regarded as a deer at all. They are normally absent from
all females except those of the genus _Rangifer_. Most deer have