THE STAG AND HIS HORNS.

Hastings Standard, Issue 276, 20 March 1897, Page 4

THE STAG AND HIS HORNS.

The stag's head is an interesting study, writes the Rev. R. W adclell in the Review of Reviews. It is the only thing which fascinates the hunter. It has also a strange biological interest. How many outside the sportsman's circle know that the huge antlers of the stag are only a year's growth'? The stag sheds them annually as the snake sloughs its skin. When the brake fern uncoils its tender little green rolls in the spring, the stag's horns also begin to sprout. Fern and antler start together, about September, and in December the latter is in "velvet." This is the name given to the skin that covers them. It is of brownish color, and soft as plush. After a while the horns harden, are supposed to tickle or irritate, and the stag rubs his head against trees to get rid of the velvet. By degrees it peels off, and then at Home he is considered to be in a fit condition for hunting. The process takes about four months. The horns are neither fixed to the head, nor do they grow out of it, like a cow's. They seem to have scarcely any perceptible, hold. Yet they are perfectly firm till the time comes to shed them. Their growth is a remarkable illustration of the power of food to replace and assimilate. The antler is a bony structure of carbonate and phosphate of lime. " Where did all the lime and carbonate and phosphate of lime come from ? From the grass and the sedge and the rush —the tiny and scanty herbage of the higher hills ; out of it came all this chemical matter ; dead cells were made living, and the blood carried them and deposited them in their places. The blood remembered tha curves and angles which had been made last year, and reproduced the pattern. The Irisk elk, a pre-historic Cervus, whose remains are found in Irish bogs, had an antler which weighed as much, if not more, than the whole skeleton, and which was renewed every year."