HIPPOPOTAMUSES, PIGS, AND DEER 291 



reach Britain seems to have been the roe (Capreolus), a persistent 

 and an archaic form of Cervine. Then came an elk — larger than 

 any now known — Alces latifrons. This early British elk may have 

 been a peculiar development of these islands, as no remains of 

 this very large species have been discovered on the Continent. 

 It was possibly one of the forerunners of the Glacial ages, and an 

 instance of the invasion of Britain from the north, by types of 

 animals coming from Iceland, Greenland, and North America. 

 About the same time appeared a deer with a palmated antler, 

 which has been named after Professor Boyd Dawkins (Dawkins's 

 deer), and which may have been a transitional form leading up 

 from the Fallow group (Dama) to the Cervus megaceros, or 

 Gigantic deer. Cervus sedgwicki is a deer which may be 

 related to the Rucervine group.-^ The antlers of Sedgwick's 

 deer (which was possibly contemporary with early man in the 

 first half of the Pleistocene period) are most extraordinary, 

 being a perfect forest of branching points, as many as thirteen 

 on each antler. It is possible that it may be an extreme 

 development in one direction of Dawkins's deer, though there 

 is also a resemblance to the Elaphine, or red deer, type. A 

 deer of very mysterious affinities, and very imperfectly known, 

 which was found in England, at any rate, during a portion of the 

 Pleistocene period, is Buckland's deer {Cervus hucklandi), which 

 was about the size of a reindeer. The imperfect fragments of its 

 horns suggest affinities to the roebuck (this is the most probable 

 theory), or to that considerable group of American deer which 

 have no brow tine to the antlers ; for the fork in the horns of 

 Buckland's deer starts several inches above the coronet. Cervus 

 suttonensis appears to be related to the spotted axis deer of India. 

 Cervus browni and C. savini were obviously early forms of 

 fallow deer. Cervus carnutorum^ together with C. dawkinsi 

 {verticornis)j are supposed to be related to the Gigantic deer, 

 and a large stag, with tremendously heavy, round, thick antlers 

 (C sirongyloceros)) is probably a gigantic race of Elaphine deer, 

 allied to the red deer, and still more to the modern maral of 

 ^ Such as Schomburgkh's deer and the other swamp deer of Eastern Asia 



