102 The Irish Naturalist. May, 



with his many-pointed horns, while warding off the attack of 

 the latter. After a time the charge is renewed ; and it has 

 occasionally happened that their antlers have got so inter- 

 locked that the exhausted animals could not disengage them, 

 and the) r died thus united. Two pairs of antlers have been 

 found so entangled suggesting this fate. 



The combats of the stags have been immortalized by great 

 painters, as in Landseer's masterpiece, " The Challenge," where 

 a magnificent Red Deer stands on the water's brink in the 

 clear night, awaiting the onset of his foe, who is shown in the 

 distance swimming to encounter him. 



The Red Deer delights in great solitudes and wild rocky 

 fastnesses, where it can not only see no human form, but 

 where the breeze is untainted by the scent of man. In 

 Scotland deer-forests exist, as large as whole counties of 

 Ireland, where many miles may be traversed without meeting 

 with a human habitation ; but though Ireland possesses great 

 tracts of mountain and other unreclaimed land, there are 

 hardly any districts at the present day that do not boast of 

 some peasants' cottages, however few and scattered these may 

 be. Accordingly, the descendants of the Irish Red Deer only 

 survive among the wooded mountains that adjoin the Killarney 

 lakes, which are strictly preserved, and on the estate of Lord 

 Maurice Fitzgerald in Wexford. These animals existed in 

 Co. Mayo up to the time of the famine, but in 1847 the 

 survivors of this splendid species were killed for food by the 

 famine-stricken people. 



There are records of Red Deer among the papers in Lismore 

 Castle which show that it was hunted on the Knockmealdown 

 Mountains in the eighteenth century, both on the Tipperary 

 and Waterford slopes of the range. There is a tradition that 

 a lad} 7 who owned estates in the latter count) 7 used to be 

 entertained by each of her tenants in turn, when a Red Deer 

 had to be provided for her from the adjoining Comeragh 

 Mountains. The former abundance of this species in Ireland 

 is shown by the presence of its remains in nearly every 

 kitchen-midden (or ash-pit) of the ancient inhabitants, and in 

 the alluvial deposits of estuaries, rivers, and bogs. 



Mr. R. J. Ussher has found bones and portions of antlers 

 among the remains of domestic animals and objects of daily 



