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Show 486 DR. G. HERBERT FOWLER ON VARIATION [Jlllie 19, specimens of this species which show the effects of partial castration on secondary sexual characters, although the point is of considerable interest; but dogmatic and contradictory statements on the matter are plentiful enough. W h e n searching for similar specimens at the College of Surgeons and the British Museum, I found apparently undescribed specimens fllustrating other points ; and I venture to submit these incomplete notes to the Society, chiefly in the hope of directing the attention of gentlemen who have herds of Fallow Deer to abnormalities in the antlers, especially with reference to the condition of the generative organs. The earliest account of experiments on the subject which I have been able to find is contained in the Introduction to an Essay entitled 'The Oeconomy of Nature in Acute and Chronical Diseases of the Glands/ by Eichard Russell, M.D., F.B.S. (London 1755, 8vo; there is also a Latin edition of the same date).-Exper. i. A " very young deer " was castrated, which never put up any horns. -Exper. ii. A young deer "some months older" was castrated ; he had " one little velvet bud instead of a horn on one side, aud an irregular velvet horn, about six inches long, on the other side ; both were cartilaginous ; and the longest had not stability enough to keep it straight, as in the Pricket Deer, but inclined horizontally." -Exper. iii. A deer, " somewhat older than the second," was castrated, " but not cut clean, as they term it. The event was this : he had two most irregular horns that never cast their velvet; aud the left testicle and spermatics being least spoiled, the left horn was (for that reason probably) one third longer than the right." From the velvet hung " soft pensile glands."-Exper. iv. T w o old bucks were castrated at the end of February; their horns dropped off on the 21st March, or about five weeks too soon. " These horns were renewed next year, and Mere longer than the bucks of the same age, but the palms or collateral branches were less and shorter ; and neither the velvet of the horns nor the horns themselves were cast ever afterwards." A postscript states that a year afterwards these horns had diminished-in the one case to stumps three or four inches in length ; in the other case, the one horn was about half wasted, the other not so much so, " possibly because this buck might not be cut so clean as the former." In the Osteological Museum of the Boyal College of Surgeons is a series of antlers and frontlets, illustrating the experiments l made by Sir Philip Egerton for Sir Bichard O w e n upon the effect of various degrees of castration on the antlers of Fallow Deer. The specimens are recorded in the Museum Catalogue of 1853, and this record is repeated in the present Catalogue; it is unfortunately silent on many points of importance. The conclusions of O w e n on this matter constitute the most authoritative sf atement with which I have been able to meet, and supersede the older statements of Bedi ('Experimenta circa Bes diversas Naturales,' Amstelodami, 1675,12mo), which have been copied into 1 The only experiments on Fallow Deer, except Russell's, of which I have found record. |
