Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1899 — "TEAR PITS” OF THE DEER. [ARTICLE]

"TEAR PITS” OF THE DEER.

Grounds for the Poets’ Claima That a Stu* Weeps. Both the poets and the prose writers of imaginative or contemplative turn of mind have often alluded to the tears shed by stags and other wounded creatures of the deer family, says the St. Louis Republic. Shakespeare put it in this way in describing the injured stag: The bis round tears Coursed one another down bis Innocent nose In piteous chase. There is, of course, more poetry than truth in these references to the actual shedding of tears by members of the deer family, yet it is a fact that such animals are provided with a curious set of organs, the action of which has given rise to the tear shedding belief. The organ in question is the lachrymal sinus or “tear pit,” which is situated just below each eye. 'lt is a kind of closed cavity, capable of being opened at the pleasure of its owner and which secretes a greasy, waxy fluid. When creatures provided with this curious organ get hurt or become enraged it has the effect of softening the waxy substance in the “tear pit.” When so softened, it escapes as tears would and flows down over the nose and face. The uses of this queer set of so-called lachrymal organs are not clearly understood by the zoologists.