104 The hish Naturalist. May, 



Professor A. Leith Adams, who reported on them, remarks 

 that though remains of Red Deer have been found in the 

 shell-marl and other sub-turbary deposits in Ireland, they 

 are far more abundant in the peat, which indicates that this 

 species became numerous during the deposition of the latter. 

 The same writer observes that he had not seen Irish antlers 

 of the size attained by horns from English cave and river 

 deposits 1 though many of the former are very symmetrically 

 shaped. 



During the making of excavations in 1900 in the reclaimed 

 alluvium south of Wexford Harbour, a remarkable pair of 

 antlers were discovered about a mile and a half from the 

 sea, three feet below the surface of the ground, in a bed of 

 peat containing oak-stumps. Upon this lay sea-mud of a 

 depth of twelve inches, and above that again nine inches of 

 surface-soil. Though these antlers (Plate 4) were alone, 

 several bones and a separate antler were found at another 

 neighbouring spot ; while not far from the latter a third 

 find was made of a pair of antlers and a number of bones. 

 The average depth where the several remains occurred was 

 four feet, and in each case the) 7 were in the layer of peat with 

 logs of oak in it. The special feature of the first pair of horns 

 (Plate 4), found in Co. Wexford as mentioned, consists in the 

 exceptional thickness of beam, which is two and a half inches 

 in diameter. That of a head in the Science and Art Museum, 

 measured by Dr. Scharff, is only one inch and a half, while a 

 very fine pair of antlers with nineteen poins, in the possession 

 of Messrs. Williams and Sons, have a beam of but two inches 

 wide. The Wexford specimen even exceeds antlers of Wapiti 

 in this respect, which have beams two and a quarter inches in 

 diameter. 



It rarely happens that when fossil remains are found, a 

 record is kept of their position and of the nature of the deposit 

 in which they are embedded, and thus their place in the 

 history of the past is left unascertained. Moreover, the 

 smaller bones, such as those of the carpus and tarsus, and 

 loose teeth, which are so valuable for determination, are 

 almost always overlooked or rejected. 



Trinity College, Dublin. 



1 /'/w, R, LA. (2) Science, vol. iii., 1877, p. 93. 



