XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
It is well known that the antlers of deer are shed and 
renewed annually; and a male may be reckoned to leave 
about eight pairs of antlers, besides its bones, to testify 
its former existence upon the earth: but, as the female 
has usually no antlers, our expectations might be limited 
to the discovery of four times as many pairs of antlers as 
skeletons in the superficial deposits of the countries in 
which such deer have lived and died. The actual pro- 
portion of the fossil antlers of the great extinct species 
of British pliocene Deer, which antlers are proved by the 
form of their base to have been shed by the living ani- 
mals, to the fossil bones of the same species is some- 
what greater than in the above calculation. Although, 
therefore, it may be contended that the swollen carcase 
of a drowned exotic Deer might be borne along a diluvial 
wave to a considerable distance, and its bones ultimately 
be deposited far from its native soil, it is not credible 
that all the solid shed antlers of such species of Deer could 
be carried by the same cause to the same distance; or 
that any of them could be rolled for a short distance with 
other heavy débris of a mighty torrent, without fracture 
and signs of friction. But the shed antlers of the large 
extinct species of Deer found in this island and in Ireland 
have commonly their points or branches entire as when 
they fell; and the fractured specimens are generally found 
in caves, and show marks of the teeth of the ossivorous 
Hyzenas, by which they had been gnawed,—thus at the 
same time revealing the mode in which they were intro- 
duced into those caves, and proving the contemporaneous 
existence in this island of both kinds of Mammalia.* 
The perfect condition, and the sharply defined processes, 
* See the beautiful and conclusive reasoning of Dr. Buckland on this subject, 
in his * Reliquize Diluyianze,’ pp. 19—24. 
