Regular Meeting, February 5th, 1866.
President in the chair.
Five members present.
Mr. Dall presented the following paper by Dr. Canfield.
Notes on Antilocapra Americana, Ord.
BY DR. C. A. CANFIELD, OF MONTEREY.
The following notes were taken from 1855 to 1858, in Monterey County, California, and were communicated to Prof. Baird in 1859.
About the first of January the old bucks all shed their horns. A few days after, one was shot, with two hairy stumps or horn-cores, several inches long, just tipped with growing horn. This was observed to spread upward and downward till the whole of the process of the frontal bone was covered with horn. The “prong” commenced the same process at its tip, and gradually coalesced with the main horn, leaving no suture. As the horn increases in length it curves forward and inward. It takes several months to perfect the new horn. The females possess small curved horns, one to three inches long, sometimes recurving to the skull, which were not proved to be deciduous.
The horn, when shed, leaves a process of the frontal bone, covered with hair, soon replaced as above by horn at the tip. These facts were more minutely observed in two young bucks, reared by hand to the age respectively of one and two years.
These facts would tend to separate the genus Antilocapra from the family Cavicornia, and it may possibly form a family by itself.