essentially an outspread surfaceÿ£¢12. In other words, I believe that the whole configuration of an antler is more easily understood by conceiving it as a plate or a surface, more and more notched and scolloped till but a slender skeleton may remain, than to look upon it the other way, namely as an axial stem (or beam) giving {630} off branches (or tines), the interspaces between which latter may sometimes be filled up to form a continuous plate.
In a sense it matters very little whether we regard the broad plate-like antlers of the elk or the slender branching antlers of the stag as the more primitive type; for we are not concerned here with the question of hypothetical phylogeny. And even from the mathôÙeôÙmatôÙiôÙcal point of view it makes little or no difference whether we describe the plate as constituted by the interconnection of the branches, or the branches derived by a