WAPITI IN WINTER.
Before leaving the subject of elk, reference may be made to a point in connection with the conformation of their antlers which struck me as the result of an examination of a large series of immature specimens in the Pilawin shooting-lodge.
It has long been recognised that the antlers of elk belong to what is known as the forked type, which occurs typically in such species as the roebuck, Père David’s deer, and the American white-tailed and mule deer. In this type, it may be well to remind the reader, there is no brow or bez tine, and the main beam of the antler divides at a longer or shorter distance above the burr into a single fork, of which the back-prong nearly always divides again, while in many cases both prongs are more or less divided, the greatest complexity occurring, however, very frequently in the hind one.
Hitherto elk-antlers have been regarded as altogether sui generis—mainly on account of the fact that they rise at right angles to the middle line of the skull. But a comparison of immature specimens in which the front prong of the main fork is double with adult antlers of the mule-deer will show that the two are practically identical in type. In both forms the front prong of the main fork is two-tined, while the hind prong carries three tines. The distinction between the two is, in fact, chiefly restricted to the difference in their orientation. In the case of those adult elk in which the antlers assume the characteristic shovel-like form, the resemblance becomes, of course, more or less completely lost.
If this view be correct, it will be advisable to modify the classification of the Cervidae adopted in Deer of All Lands, and to place the elk in the neighbourhood of the roebuck and the mule-deer, with which it agrees in the structure of the foot-skeleton. Moreover, it seems not improbable that the antlers of reindeer are really of the forked (in contradistinction to the brow-tined) type, and if this be so, that genus must also be placed near the roebuck—an arrangement which would accord with the one proposed many years ago by the late Sir Victor Brooke on the evidence afforded by the structure of the skeleton of the forelimb.
The present opportunity may likewise be taken of referring to two very fine pairs of elk-antlers obtained by Mr. Sokalski in Siberia. Despite the fact of their being palmated, these antlers (which I hope to have the opportunity of describing on a future occasion) may serve to confirm the distinctness of the East Siberian elk (Alces machlis bedfordiae), as they appear to differ in certain details of form from those of European elk.
Returning to the Pilawin deer, the next to be noticed are the American wapiti, which are flourishing fully as well as the elk; the number of fawns born during the year being nine.
Another feature indicating the satisfactory condition of the herd is the large size of the antlers grown by the big stags, of which there are now three; all being imported animals. Of the antlers shed by the two best stags of their year in 1907, the length along the outer curve is in one case forty-four and in the other forty-one inches; while in both instances the antlers are very symmetrically formed, carrying the usual six points a side.
ONE OF THE BEST WAPITI, WITH THE ANTLERS IN VELVET.