oblique to the axis of the beam, which is traversed by clearly denned deep grooves. These, however, are very generally worn away by the action of water. The beam runs straight away from the burr and is cylindrical, except at the point where the brow-tyne springs immediately above the base. At that point there is a smooth triangular area, slightly convex or flat on the superior surface and slightly concave on the inferior, and which is free from the grooves which occur on the rest of the antler. The brow-tyne (B) is slightly oval in section, and gradually tapers to a rounded point, which is broken away in all the specimens which have passed through my hands; it forms an acute angle with the beam, as in Axis and Rusa, and is very much smaller in every dimension. The beam in figs. 8 & 9 is flattened at the point H on its superior surface, which is an indication that a tyne was about to take its rise. The flattening cannot be a mere accidental variation, because it is found in all the antlers which present 4 or 5 inches of beam. Direct evidence as to the crown is wanting; but the fact that all the antlers (some twenty-six or thirty) are broken in some part of the beam, implies that they possessed a crown which was not simple[1], and the median flattening renders it very probable that it was forked, as in Axis and Rusa. A fragment of a crown of two points, from the Crag of Sutton, in the possession of Mr. Prestwich, may perhaps be assigned to this species. On the whole, the scanty evidence points in the direction of the Axis and Rusa rather than in any other.
In Mr. Whincopp's collection, which I examined at Woodbridge in 1866, is a nearly perfect specimen of a simple styliform antler, about 3 inches long, shed and deeply grooved (fig. 10). It is probably the first young antler of this species. It was accompanied by two fragments of similar form.
Two small waterworn fragments of the base of the antler of Cervus suttonensis have been referred by Prof. Owen to the Cervus dicranoceros of Kaup from the Miocene of Darmstadt. If, however, Prof. Owen's figures in the 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society' (vol. vii. p. 234, figs. 14a, 16) be compared with those of Dr. Kaup (Oss. foss. de Darmstadt, tab. 24. figs. 3, 3e), it will be seen that the former antler, which is very much waterworn, possesses a beam (op. cit. fig. 14a) which is much larger than the simple bifurcated antler of C. dicranoceros described by Dr. Kaup[2].
In C. dicranoceros the beam and the brow-tyne were equal in length or nearly so, while in the series of antlers of C. suttonensis the beam was at least as well developed as in Axis and Rusa, and bore a crown. For the same reason also the series of antlers cannot be referred to the C. australis of Marcel de Serres, from the marine sands of Montpellier.
- ↑ The cause of the fracture is the firm fixture of the crown in the stratum while the rest was exposed to the clash of the waves which washed the antlers out of the fluviatile gravel in which they were imbedded.
- ↑ Prof. Owen's fig. 16 represents an antler viewed on the underside, and in such perspective that the brow-tyne appears to be of nearly equal size with the beam.
