808 Dr Hibbert on the Hisimy of the Cervus Eur^ceros, 



in the front of the drawing, which we shall suppose to be of 

 the male sex, being somewhat larger and more inflected than 

 those -of the female. The coincidence of this delineation with 

 the observations of Baron Cuvier and Mr Hart, but more 

 particularly of the latter, is very striking. The former ob- 

 serves, " Quant aux bois, ils varient, ainsi que Ton devoit s'y 

 attendre, neanmoins je n'ai jamais vu ni entendu parler de 

 tete qui en fut depourvue, en sorte qu'il est a croire que dans 

 cette especc, comme dans celle du renne, les deux sexes avoient 

 des bois." And to this opinion, that the female possessed 

 horns, after the manner of the reindeer, Mr Hart subscribes, 

 for the following reason. He has observed '' that these parts 

 present differences in size and strength which appear not to 

 be dependent on differences of age ; for instance the teeth of 

 the specimen in Trinity College are much more worn down, 

 and the sutures of the skull are more effaced than in the spe- 

 cimens described in this paper ; yet the horns of the latter are 

 much ihore concave and more expanded than in those of the 

 former ; and on comparing a single horn of each of these spe- 

 cimens together, that belonging to the society exceeds the 

 other by nearly a sixth in the length, and little less than a 

 third in the breadth ; it is not therefore unlikely that the ani- 

 mal whose horns were larger and more curved was a male." 



M unster has estimated the animal to be about the size of an 

 ass or a middle-sized horse. Perhaps the latter standard is the 

 most correct ; and it meets with a familiar, yet striking, illus- 

 tration in the fact, that when the blacksmith of the Isle of Man, 

 who put together the noble skeleton which now adorns the Edin- 

 burgh Museum, discovered that he was short of some few of the 

 bones, he supplied the deficiency from those of the horse, which 

 he found from repeated trials to be the nearest to them in di- 

 mensions, and, as such, the least liable to be detected; which cir- 

 cumstance affords a better criterion of the comparative size of the 

 animal than can be conveyed by the appearance which he ac- 

 tually exhibits in the Edinburgh Museum, as he is set up 

 much too high, with the view of rendering his trunk as gigantic 

 as his horns. His true height has in this instance been calcu- 

 lated at about five feet to the withers. — Whether the specimen 

 of Dubhn is wholly free from this objection I will not pretend 



