Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 34.djvu/498

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Cervine antlers have been met with in the Pliocene strata of France and Italy which cannot be brought into close relation with any of those possessed by living Deer: such, for example, as the Cervus ramosus from Auvergne in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and the magnificent pair of antlers from the Val d'Arno in the Geological Museum at Florence, termed Cervus dicranios by Nesti, which has not as yet been accurately determined, and many others, among which the folio wing series of antlers deserves a prominent place from their perfection and their number, and the light they throw on the variation in antler-form in proportion to age.

C. tetracroceros, Bravard, MSS.

The seven shed antlers bearing these names in the British Museum were derived from the Pliocene strata of Peyrolles in the Puy de Dôme, and are remarkable not merely from their forms, but for their fine state of preservation.

They possess respectively two, three, and four tynes, and evidently follow the usual rule of the development of tynes in the Cervidæ, in which the first appears in the second year, and the rest en suite. They belong therefore to animals four, five, and six years old. The two-year old animal probably possessed a simple styliform antler, while at three years a brow-tyne appeared, as is