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VI.—Notes on the Red-Deer, Cervus elaphus, Linn.1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Extract

The Red-Deer (Cervus elaphus), or common stag, is a native of the more temperate regions of Europe, Asia, and North America, lu Great Britain it has its freedom limited to the Highlands of Scotland, where, however, it is carefully protected, and affords the crême de la crême of British field-sports to the practised rifleman and mountaineer.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1898

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Footnotes

1

Read before the British Association, Toronto, in Section D (Zoology), 1897.

References

page 119 note 2 The shooting of some of the deer forests, of from 25,000 to 35,000 acres, is let for between £3,000 and £4,000 per annum.

page 119 note 3 The ballad of Chevy Chase records such a wholesale slaughter, though the history of field-sports relieves the statement of any suspicion of poetic license.

page 120 note 1 “In the Deer (Cervidœ) the antlers consist wholly of bone which grows from the frontals, the periosteum and finely-haired integument, called ‘velvet,’ coextending therewith during the period of growth; at the end of which the formative envelope loses it vascularity, dries, and is stript off, leaving the bone a hard insensible weapon. After some months’ use as such the horns, or more properly ‘antlers,’ having lost all vascular connection with the skull, and standinginrelation thereto as dead appendages, are undermined by the absorbent process and are shed; whereupon the growth of a succeeding pair commences. The shedding of the antlers coincides with that of the hair, and, with the renewal of the same, is annual.’—Ownt.

page 120 note 2 See Richardson's “Museum of Natural History.’