book, into which its lining membrane is raised. Finally there is the abomasum, out of which proceeds the small intestine. Garrod has observed that the chamber of the stomach which varies most among the Pecora is the psalterium. This chamber is specially large in Bos, and particularly small in the Antelopes Nannotragus and Cephalophus. But its variation relates more especially to the folds of its mucous membrane. These folds are of varying lengths and have a definite arrangement There may be as many as five sets of laminae of regular depths. The most simple psalterium is that of Cephalophus, where there are only two sets of laminae of different sizes, a deeper set and a very much shallower set; this form is termed by Garrod "duplicate." Most common is the "quadruplicate" arrangement, with four sets of laminae of differing depths. In all Pecora the liver is but little divided by fissures.
Fam. 6. Cervidae.—The Deer tribe is a very extensive one, and, with the exception of Africa and Australia, world-wide in distribution.[1]
The Deer are absolutely distinguished from all other Ruminant animals by the existence of antlers, which are invariably present in the male sex, save in the aberrant genera Moschus and Hydropotes; in the Reindeer alone are antlers present in both sexes. The general characters of these appendages have been dealt with on a former page (p. 200), where they are compared to, or rather contrasted with, the horns of the Bovidae. These antlers, so characteristic of the Cervidae, are very variously developed among the members of the family. Thus in Elaphodus the antlers are very small and entirely unbranched. In the Muntjacs, Cervulus, the antlers are hardly larger, but they have a small anterior branch arising from near the pedicel, the "brow tine." In Cariacus antisiensis only one branch, the brow tine, is present, but it is nearly as long as the main stem of the antler, the "beam." In Capreolus capraea the beam bears two tines; in Cervus sika three; in C. duvauceli two of the three tines present bear secondary branches. There are other complications (some of which are illustrated in Figs. 152-157) of the simple antler which culminate in the complex antlers with their expanded "palms" of the Elk and the Fallow Deer.
- ↑ Sir Victor Brooke, "On the Classification of the Cervidae," Proc. Zool. Soc. 1878, p. 883.
