It will be seen from this description and the measurements that these two so-called species are really merely individual variations of one species, for which I would retain the name of C. perrieri.
I detected antlers belonging to this species preserved in the collection (examined in 1866) of Mr. Dowson at Beccles, Suffolk, comprising basal and coronal parts, one of the former being identical with the variety C. issiodorensis. The locality, however, of these fragments is uncertain, and it is just as likely that they may have been derived from the Pliocenes of France as from the same horizon in the Crags of Norfolk and Suffolk.
A perfect antler with four tynes, in the Museum at Florence, obtained from the Val d'Arno, which I examined in 1877, also belongs to this form, which therefore is common to the Pliocenes of France and Italy.
Living Representative.—This peculiar type of antler, with four tynes, is identical in form with that of the Cervus taëvanus of the island of Formosa, which Dr. Sclater has figured and described from the animals living in the Gardens of the Zoological Society in Regent's Park (Zool. Trans. 1870, p. 345, pls. xxxiii., xxxiv.). It is also identical with that of Cervus mantchuricus figured and described by Dr. Sclater in the same essay ( = Pseudaxis mantchuricus of British Museum Catalogue, which relates to a young animal with a three-tyned antler).
B. Cervus pardinensis.
Cervus pardinensis, Croizet and Jobert, op. cit. pl. xi; Pomel, op. cit. p. 106; Gervais, op. cit. p. 140.
The type specimen bearing this name is in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and consists of a shed antler, perfect with the exception of the tips of the three tynes, from Pardines, Mont Perrier.
Definition.—It possesses the following characters:—Antler (fig. 5) grooved, round, but slightly curved, and possessed of three tynes; burr (A) stout and oblique to long axis of beam; brow-tyne (B) basal, short, round, and springing at an acute angle; brow-tyne angle webbed; second tyne (D) forming a forked crown, smaller than third, which it joins at an acute angle; coronal angle webbed.
Measurements (inches).
C. pardinensis (Jardin
des Plantes, 1874).
- Total length from burr
22⋅0
- Circumference of base of antler
4⋅7
- Burr to fork
2⋅8
- Brow-tyne to coronal fork
11⋅0
This form of antler seems to me to be closely related to that of Cervus perrieri, and it is very possible that it is a younger antler of that species, related to it as the young Cervus (Pseudaxis of Gray) mantchuricus in the British Museum with three tynes is related to
