35 



excellent memoir (P. S. Antiq. Scotland, ix., pp. 297-345), where will 

 be found full details of the discovery of its remains in Sutherland, 

 Perth, Forfar, East and Mid Lothian, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, 

 and Berwickshire. In England its antlers have been found 

 associated with Romano-British remains, but historic evidence of 

 its date of extinction in Britain is wanting. Aldrovandus quotes 

 Julius Capitolinus as to certain Cervi palmati which were brought 

 from Britain, and exhibited in the games of the Emperor 

 Gordian (in the 4th century), but there can be no certainty as to 

 the species meant (cf. Scoular, J. Geol. Soc. Dublin, l, pp. 197- 

 209). Whittaker, in his " History of Manchester," suggests, that 

 the traditional animal named Segh by the Welsh may have been 

 the Elk, and the Highlanders still preserve stories of a gigantic 

 extinct Deer, which they term either Miol (Scrope, Days of Deer- 

 stalking, p. 344, foot-note) or Lon. In the older fragments of Gaelic 

 poetry it is described as the chief object of the chase of Fionn 

 and his followers, and several descriptive epithets are applied to 

 it, as luath, swift, dubh, black or dark, and spagach, shambling 

 (Campbell, Tales of W. Highlands, n., p. 102, iv., pp. 163, 255). 

 An ancient poem, quoted by the brothers Stuart in their "Lays 

 of the Deer Forest" (n., p. 9), alludes to the Lon as a woodland 

 animal — 



" 'Us gorm mheall-aild nam mile guibhas, 

 Nan lub, nan earba, 's nan lon." 

 which they translate — 



"The bine height of a thousand pines, 

 Of Wolves and Roes and of Elks." 

 It does not appear improbable that the Elk may have survived 

 in the great northern forests to a comparatively late period, and 

 corroborative evidence is afforded by the fresh condition of a shed 

 antler, discovered in Strath Halladale, Sutherlandshire, which is 

 stated by Dr. Smith to have "apparently lost nothing of its animal 

 or mineral constituents." 



7. Rangifer tarandus (Linnaeus). 



Rein-Deer. 



As in the case of the Elk, we are indebted to Dr. J. A. Smith for a 

 careful study of the history of the Rein-Deer as a Scottish species 

 (P. Soc. Antiq. Scotland, viii., pp. 186-222), and I must refer the 

 reader to his excellent paper for full details of the discovery of 

 its remains in Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, West Lothian, 



