The relics of bone, antler, stone, shell and copper are of yesterday.
All this time the growing antler is invested with a skin clothed with exceedingly fine short hairs, and is most liberally supplied with blood-vessels; this sensitive skin being called the velvet.
The one complete antler has a well-marked burr and a long undivided beam, which eventually forks.
This deposition of bony matter progresses very rapidly, and although in young deer and the adults of some species the resulting antler merely forms a simple spike, or a single fork, in full-grown individuals of the majority it assumes a more or less complexly branched structure.
These new channels had restored the supply to the growing antler.