May, 1907. The Itish Naturalist. 165 



ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE IRISH ELK, 



BY R. F. SCHARFF, PH.D. 



WE are so accustomed to look upon our common Fallow Deer 

 as the nearest living relation of the extinct Giant Deer {Cervus 

 giganteus) or " Irish Elk " as it is commonly called in this 

 country, that it comes to us as quite a surprise to find that a 

 well-known Swedish authority now disputes the correctness 

 of that view. Prof. Eonnberg 1 indeed goes so far as to sa3^ 

 that the likeness between the Fallow Deer and the Irish Elk 

 is only superficial, and that there seems to begreaterreal affinity 

 between the latter and the Reindeer. 



I may mention that when Sir Victor Brooke 2 wrote his well- 

 known essay on the classification of the Deer tribe he founded 

 his divisions, as their names iinply, upon the position in the 

 fore-limbs of two splint-like bones, the rudiments of the 

 second and fifth metacarpals. He called the two divisions 

 Plesiometacarpi and Telemetacarpi. In the Deer belonging to 

 the first division the lateral splint-bones (metacarpals) are only 

 present in the near or upper part of the limb, while the second 

 division includes all the Deer which possess splint-bones in 

 the remote or lower portion of the fore-limb. Thus the 

 genera Cervus and Dama, to which our Red-deer and Fallow 

 Deer lespectively belong, are included in the division of the 

 Plesiometacarpi, while all the true American Deer, including 

 the Reindeer, are members of the other group. 



It was only an afterthought, as it were, on Sir Victor 

 Brooke's part and a suggestion of Prof. Garrod's to include in 

 his definition of the two great divisions of the Deer tribe other 

 osteological characters besides the position of the splint-bones. 

 But those other characters are evidently not of the same 

 importance as the original ones on which the two divisions 

 were founded. Prof. Eonnberg makes no reference to this 

 fact in his suggestive and interesting paper. 



1 Lonnberg (Einar) : Which is the taxonomic position of the Irish 

 Giant Deer and allied races ? Arkiv f. Zool., vol. iii., 1906. 



JBrooke (Sir Victor): On the Classification of the Cervidae, with a 

 synopsis of the existing species. Ptoc. Z00L Soc. London, 1878. 



