Oct.-Nov., 191 8. The Irish Naturalist, 133 



THE IRISH RED DEER. 



BY R. F. SCHARFF, B.SC, M.R.I. A. 



Three kinds of deer formerly inhabited Ireland, viz. : — 

 the Reindeer [Rangifer tarandus), the Irish Giant Deer or 

 Irish " Elk " [Cervus giganteus), and the Red Deer {Cervus 

 elaphus). The first two became extinct so long ago that 

 we do not even possess any evidence of their having existed 

 in this country within historical times. It is quite different 

 with the Red Deer which still survives in a semi-domesticated 

 and not entirely pure strain in the forests of Killarney. 

 The deer which we notice in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, 

 and many other parks, belong to quite another species which 

 never was indigenous in Ireland. They are Fallow Deer 

 and are easily distinguished from the Red Deer by their 

 flattened or palmated antlers. 



The extinction of the Red Deer in Ireland as a wild 

 animal is quite a recent historical event. There may still 

 be people living who have actually seen wild Red Deer. 

 William Thompson (1) states that when travelling in the west 

 in 1834 he was informed that there were still thirteen Red 

 Deer in Connemara and tw^elve in the barony of Erris. 

 About this time a few were believed to survive in the Galtee 

 Mountains in Tipperary, and also near Glengarriff in 

 County Cork. According to Mr. George T. Macartney's 

 note in the Field of 1874 an exceptionally heavy snowfall 

 occurred in the year 1834 which seems to have led to the 

 final extinction of the Erris herd of Red Deer. From 

 another source it was reported that the last specimen in 

 Erris was shot near Nephin Beg in 1830 by Thomas Lynn, 

 but that in the year of the great snow (1834 ?) another 

 came down into the lowlands and was killed by the country 

 people with spades and pitchforks. 



About the same period several country gentlemen in 

 the west of Ireland, notably Lord Sligo and Major Knox, 

 kept small herds of Red Deer in their parks. Occasionally 

 it happened that some of these escaped and were shot in 

 the mountains, and to this fact may be due the report 

 that five deer were killed in Erris in the year 1850. 



A 



