On The Evolution of Antlers in the Ruminants

Abstract

“THE development of antlers in the Ruminants to which Sir John Lubbock alluded in his address to the British Association at York, confirms the truth of the doctrine of evolution in so clear a way that it is well worthy of being laid before the readers of NATURE, although I have already brought it in part before the Geological Society in 1877 (Quart. Journ, Geol. Soc. xxxiv. 419), and published it in outline three years later, in my work on “Early Man in Britain, and His Place in the Tertiary Period.” The results of an inquiry to which I was led by a systematic study, extending over several years, of the more important collections of fossil mam malia in Britain, France, and Italy, may be summed up as follows:—