ON BRITISH FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 237 
the Mammoth and the Rhinoceros, and its fossil remains have been discovered 
in almost all those formations and localities which have yielded those of the 
before-mentioned extinct Mammals. : 
The oldest stratum yielding evidence of a Cervus of the size of the Red 
Deer, is the Miocene Red Crag at Newbourne, and remains of this species 
attest its existence through intermediate strata up to the period of the for- 
mation of the turbaries and peat-bogs. 
Dr. Buckland makes mention of the discovery of an entire skull of a Deer, 
in the bone-cave at Paviland, as large as a Red Deer, but of a different 
species. The rounded base of a shed antler, measuring 3 inches in dia- 
meter above the brow-antler, and sending forwards the second or bezantler 
within three inches of the former, indicates a species of the Elaphine group, 
equalling the Cervus Megaceros in the size of the beams of the antler; and 
therefore, from the known proportions of the body to the antlers in the Red 
Deer, probably exceeding that great extinct species from the Irish bogs in 
size, and at least equalling the Wapiti Deer (Cervus Canadensis, Brisson). 
The fossil in question was found in Kent’s Hole, where also remains of the 
Megaceros occur. 
Subgenus Dama. 
Antlers slightly palmated, most nearly resembling those of the Fallow 
Deer (Cervus Dama, Linn.), with teeth, portions of jaws and other bones 
agreeing in size with those parts in the Fallow Deer, have been found in 
several of the newer tertiary deposits and the bone-caves of England, asso- 
ciated with the usual extinct Mammalia. I received similar remains with the 
tusks of the Wild Boar from the marl under the peat-moss at Newbury. 
The lower jaw of a Deer, about the size of the Fallow, occurs in the plio- 
cene at Bacton. 
Subgenus Megaceros. 
Megaceros Hibernicus. 
The most remarkable of the unquestionably extinct species of the Cervine 
family is that which is commonly called the Irish Elk. The most abundant 
and the most perfect examples of this noble animal have been furnished by 
the bogs of Ireland, where they occur below the peat in the lacustrine marl, 
but the species is by no means peculiar to Ireland ; an entire skeleton havmg 
been found in the newer pliocene deposits in the Isle of Man, and charac- 
teristic portions of the skeleton and antlers in freshwater deposits of a cor- 
responding age, and in some of the bone-caves of England. 
Dr. Molyneux*, the original describer of the antlers of the Megaceros, 
points out their distinction from the true Elk, and the true affinities of the 
extinct species have been more exactly determined by Cuvier and later 
anatomists. 
The rounded beam of the antler expands, sooner than in the true Dama, 
into a broad palm, which sends off all the processes or snags, save one, from 
its anterior border, in which respect Megaceros differs from Dama and re- 
sembles Alces ; it differs from the Elk in having one posterior branch or ‘spil- 
ler,’ and more especially in having both brow-antler and. bezantler. The 
Reindeer (Rangifer) makes the nearest approach to the Megaceros in the 
large development of the antlers, but the extinct species far surpasses all known 
Cervide in the enormous proportions of the antlers as compared with the 
skull. In the occasional bifurcation of the expanded end of the brow-antler 
it again approximates the characters of the Reindeer (Rangifer), but does 
not push its affinity to this genus so far as to have antlers developed in both 
sexes, as Cuvier suspected. 
* Philos, Trans. vol. xiv, p. 489. 
