become fat, but the productions of their horns ceases, their necks and throats never swell, and their fat is very different from that of the perfect stag, which in the rutting season is so very strong as not only to render the flesh uneatable but offensive to the smell, and will corrupt in a very short time, while that of the former may be long preserved sweet, and eaten at all times. Another proof that the horns are produced by a redundance of the nutritive juices may be drawn from the circumstance, that those of stags of the same age will be either thick or thin, in proportion to the supply of food; for the stag which lives in a plentiful country, where he feeds at his pleasure, and rests at his ease, undisturbed by dogs or men, will always have much larger and more beautiful antlers than he who has scanty subsistence, and is disturbed in his repose; so that it is easy to determine by the horns of a stag whether he have inhabited a rich and quiet country. Those also which are in bad health, have been wounded, or frequently disturbed by hunting, have seldom fine horns or good flesh; they are later in beginning to rut, and their horns are neither shed nor renewed so early as others. Thus every circumstance concurs to prove, that the horns, like the seminal fluid, are merely the redundant superfluity of the organic juices which cannot be employed in developing and supporting the animal body. It is the insufficiency of food, therefore, that retards the growth of the horns and diminishes their size; and perhaps it would not be impossible, by scanty diet, greatly to prevent their growth without having recourse to castration. It is certain that castrated stags eat less than others; and the reason the females of this species, as well as the fallow deer, the roe, and the elk, have no horns, is because they eat less than the males, and because at the very time the redundance would naturally happen, and appear externally, they are with young, and consequently the superfluous juices are first employed in nourishing the foetus and afterwards in producing milk for the fawn. The objection that the female rein deer is furnished with horns rather supports what is here advanced; for of all quadrupeds which have horns, the rein deer has by much the largest in proportion to his size, as they frequently extend the whole length of his body; he also abounds more in fat, and those of the females are very small comparatively with those of the male; the instance therefore only serves to prove, that when the redundancy exceeds what can be exhausted by gestation, it diffuses itself outwardly in the same manner as that of the males. These remarks respecting nourishment, are not, however, to be applied to the quantity of provisions, but solely to the quantity of organic molecules which they contain; the latter being that active and prolific matter which supports animate beings, and the former a dead mass which has no effect upon the body of the animal; and as the _lichen