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Notice oft/te Skeleton of a Red Deer (Cervus Elaphu*) found at Chet- 

 wicky North Durham. By J. S. DONALDSON, Esq. 



ON the 2d June 1835, some workmen engaged in making a drain 

 upon the farm of Mr George Scott, in the township of Cheswick, North 

 Durham, having dug to the depth of five feet, came upon the head of 

 what they conceived to be the skeleton of a horse, but which, on a fur- 

 ther examination, proved to be, as I shall endeavour to shew, that of a 

 quadruped of the genus Cervus. The skeleton was in an upright or 

 standing posture, embedded in a kind of mossy earth, above which was 

 sand, and the workmen had to dig about four feet lower than the point 

 where they found the head, before they succeeded in getting the whole of 

 it out of the ground. I regret that I could not procure the entire skele- 

 ton, the greater part having been dispersed and buried again previous 

 to my being informed of its discovery ; and I particularly regret not 

 having seen the head, which would have enabled me to have decided at 

 once, and without any doubt, on the order and genus to which the animal 

 was referable. But from the description of those parts of the skeleton, 

 which I did not see, but which I received from Mr Scott and his work- 

 men, particularly as to the absence of cutting teeth in the upper face, and 

 the hoofs being cloven, as well as from the few bones which I was able 

 to procure, viz. the two metacarpal or shank bones, and several of the 

 ribs, which I have brought for the inspection of the members of the 

 Club, I have no doubt of its being the remains of a Red Deer, Cervu* 

 Elaphus. No antlers were found, they having either been removed 

 previous to our discovery, or else the animal had died at the period 

 when the antlers were shed, and before the new ones were grown ; or it 

 may have been the skeleton of a female, which in general has no antleis. 

 I may here remark, that antlers of the Bed Deer have frequently beeu 

 found in the bogs and low grounds of this township, some of which J have 

 myself inspected. If I am correct in the supposition that these are the 

 remains of a red deer, it would appear that these beautiful and majestic 

 animals, which are now only to be found in a state of nature in the most 

 remote and inaccessible parts of the Highlands of Scotland, in the New 

 Forest in Hampshire, the higher moors and wastes of Cornwall and De- 

 vonshire, and in the woods and hills of Martendale forest near Ulswater, 

 in Westmoreland, were once the denizens of our Northumbrian wilds 

 and forests ; and the country between Bclford and the Tweed, including 

 the Kyloe and Lowick hills and moors, appear to have afforded hauuts 

 well suited to their habits. Cultivation, and the increase of population, 

 which, since the Union, have here in particular been so much extended 

 and increased, have extirpated the larger beasts of chase, replacing them, 

 however, with animals of much greater utility to man, and creating out 

 of what was, at the period of the accession of King James the First to the 

 English throne, a desert waste, ouc of the best cultivated and most fertili 

 districts in the kingdom. 



