ABERRANT ANTLERS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, 13 March 1908, Page 1

ABERRANT ANTLERS.

I have said above that, although aberrant and malformed heads are conspicuous in Jura by their absence, there is, nevertheless, one remarkable exception. These are called "cromie" heads (from Gaelic "Cromogach" — crooked), and resemble more the heads of goats than of deer, being generally composed of short antics, Dent backwards instead of spreading laterally, and with all the points lying back in the same plane. Stags with "cromie" heads only affect certain parts of the ground, and even in those parts do not average more than 3 per cent, of the stock oj stags on the same beals. They are historical in Jura, seeming to occur nowhere else in Scotland, and the ydo not increase, yet there are always a few. I thad often occurred to me that if inbreeding produced aberrant antlers, such stock as Jura should show a great many, yet the reverse is the case ; and when, in 1890, I was preparing a paper on the subject for the "Field," I began the question from the olher end, ant} endeavoured to ascertain in what species of dea.', and in what localities of the deer-frequented temtories of the world, aberrant antlers vert 1 most numerous and in greatest variety. The result of such investigations as I could make, with the aid of books and of correspondence with brother sportsmen, came to this — that aberrant antlers are most numerous and most varied in the European stag and roe, especially the latter ; and in the North American caribou and white-tailed deer, again especially the latter. Now, none of these deer can, under any reasonable interpretation of the circumI stances be described as "inbred"! and the white-tail, which is pre-eminent foi freaks, must be one of the least inbred species on the y'obe. No doubt many of the famous malformations in the various collections came from deer kept in large enclosures, b,ut less so in the case of the roe"tha.i) in the case of tho sLui?, and yet the roe seemß, of the two. to be the most productive of imoiu.iosities. Having established these fact 6 to my own satisfaction, I turned to the stockyar dand the stable, and was compeled to acknowledge the further fact that all our best sti.ains of domestic stock are highly inbred — whether blood horses, or shorthorns, or pedigree sheep — and seem none the worse of it ; and, finally, I ascertained that George Darwin h:.d made an exhaustive study of the rpqlls of'marfiaeea between first cousins in England, and was unable to demonstrate that those families had deteriorated in which consanguineous unions had been most frequent. For all the above reasons I have come to the conclusion that inbreeeding is not a "vera causa" for aberrant antlers. Where such antlers are most numerous it does not apparently occur ; and where it must undoubtedly occur we do not necessarily find aberrations. • I think, moreover, on the whole question cf inbreeding, that the evils of what yon justly describe as "animal in- \ ' cest" have not as yet been clearly established or conclusively demonstrated, even among domestic animals ; although in regard to plants ,the contrivances of Nature to prevent "herbaceous incest" are as numerous as they are ingenious. As to the main cause of aberration in antlers I find so few facts to go upon that anything I could say about it would be purely speculative ; but one fact is, I think, fairl ysalient, viz., that deer on treeless ranges, as in Scotland, exhibit a surprisingly small number of malformations relatively to deer that habitually live in covert ; while deer that resort to really thick covert seem specially prone to them. Sir Arthur Grant, of Monymusk, in Aberdeenshire, told me that he had a very hrge area of n ro »'nd planted in sections, spasmodically with young wood, and that these suffered greatly from the depredations of his roe, which were very numerous. To keep out the roe he alttced the wire fencing from plain wire to bached wire, and he affirmed that in subsequent years he met with a surprising number of roe with freak antlers. This he attributed to injuries or contusions caused by tl.e barb wire when the. roe attempted to squeeze through the fence as they had previously been wont to do. The above facts lead me to be'ieve th.it more eases of aberration than are gemuilly supposed arise from contortion, pushin;, or squeezing, in thick covert by deer with antlers in the plastic stage. But ,of course, such contortions are not inherited. (To be continued,.)