
ON BRITISH FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 239 
up from the oyster-bed at Happisburgh, already referred to as famous for the 
numerous teeth of the Mammoth which it has yielded. 
Remains of the Megaceros found 8 feet below the surface of a peat-bog 
at Hilgay, Norfolk, are preserved in the collection of Mr. Flower, of Hunter- 
street, London. Antlers of the Megaceros have been disinterred from the 
marl or gravel beneath peat-bogs in Lancashire. 
The formerly unique skeleton of the Megaceros in the Museum of the 
University of Edinburgh was obtained from a formation in the Isle of Man, 
which Mr. E. Forbes, Prof. of Botany in King’s College, London, informs 
me is a white marl, with freshwater shells found in detached masses, occu- 
pying hollows in the red marl, which, by the proportion of marine shells. of 
the species found in the neighbouring seas, is referable to the newer plio- 
cene period. The cervine fossils have never been met with in the marine or 
red marls in the Isle of Man, but only in the white marls occupying the fresh- 
water basins of the red marl; and from the position of the beds containing 
the remains of the Megaceros, Prof. Forbes concludes that this gigantic 
species must have existed posterior to the elevation of the newer pliocene 
marl, which is probably continuous with the same formation in Lancashire 
and at the mouth of the Clyde, forming a great plain, extending from Scot- 
land to Cheshire, and now for the most part covered by the sea. 
Fragments of the huge antlers and other remains of the Megaceros have 
been discovered in some of the ossiferous caverns in England, A characteristic 
specimen, now in the British Museum, was obtained by Mr. M‘Enery from 
Kent's Hole; it consists of part of the upper jaw with both series of molar 
teeth ; it precisely corresponds with the same parts in the skull of a Megaceros — 
from Ireland. Since, however, other large Ruminants have been introduced 
into the same cavern, I have compared it with the nearest analogues from that 
order. The molar teeth and intervening palate are broader transversely in 
the fossil than in the Ox; the molars differ from those of the Aurochs in the 
small cusp between the two internal crescents; the posterior palatine fora- 
mina, which in the Ox are opposite the interspace of the penultimate and last 
grinders, and which in the Elk are advanced to opposite the antepenultimate 
molars, are, in the fossil, opposite the middle of the penultimate molars, as in 
the Megaceros. 
Thus the evidence of the former existence of the gigantic extinct Deer, 
Megaceros Hibernicus, though less striking and abundant in England than in 
Ireland, is complete, and of greater value, inasmuch as it establishes the con- 
temporaneity of that species with the Mammoth, Rhinoceroses, and other ex- 
tinct Mammalia of the period of the formation of the newest tertiary fresh- 
water fossiliferous strata. 
Conclusion. 
Collections of Mammalian bones from turbaries and peat-bogs, from the beds 
of rivers and from gravel-pits, with parts of the human skeleton, and other 
evidences of their deposition within the human period, have not unfrequently 
been submitted to my inspection. Such collections have never presented any 
evidence of an extinct species, and have for the most part included unequivocal 
remains of the domesticated quadrupeds. Thus a collection of Mammalian 
bones, transmitted to me by Dr, Richardson of Haslar, from a gravel-pit in 
Lincolnshire, contained the remains of a Dog, Cat, Hog, Horse, Ass, Ox, and 
Sheep. A similar collection obtained from the banks of the river Avon, in 
sinking the foundations of a bridge over the river near the town of Chippenham, 
included bones of the Dog, Horse, Hog, Ox, Red Deer, and Goat or Sheep. 
Such remains have undergone but little change, are not adhesive or absor- 
bent from the loss of the animal matter, nor weighty from the addition of 
mineral or metallic salts ; and are here adduced, though not strictly belonging 
