* 212 AN ANCIENT HAUNT OF THE CERVUS MEGADEROS ; 
An account of this exploration was contributed by Mr. Moss to the 
Royal Irish Academy in which he thus describes the formation under 
which the fossil remains lay; “The first foot of material removed 
consisted of peat; under this there was a stratum of sand of an 
average depth of about two feet. The sand lay upon a brown 
coloured clay which extended for about two feet, and lay upon a bed 
of granite boulders. The spaces between the lower parts of the 
boulders were filled with a fine bluish-grey clay.” Here amongst 
the boulders, and surrounded with the brown clay, nineteen skulls, 
with many broken pieces of horn and bones were found, and the 
result in all was the recovery of thirty-six skulls with antlers more 
or less imperfect, mostly belonging to young deer, along with 
detached horns and bones, representing in all about fifty individuals 
of the Cervus megaceros. Among the specimens recovered at the 
earlier date about thirty individuals of the same gigantic fossil deer 
had been represented ; although both explorations involved only a 
very partial examination of this remarkably rich lacustrine deposi- 
tory. But the result of Mr. Moss’ careful investigation was to 
determine the precise locality where research might be renewed to 
like advantage at any future time ; and here it was accordingly that 
a party of members of the British Association were invited to join him 
in hunting the Irish elk in its ancient habitat among the Wicklow 
meres, 
The scene of this interesting exploration is the site of an ancient 
tarn, where for ages the moss has been accumulating, till a peat 
formation of varying thickness overlies a sandy clay intermingled 
with forms of vegetable matter, and at times with fallen trunks of 
trees. The whole rests on a bed of clay interspersed with granite 
boulders, as already described. Among these, but not below them, 
the bones of the fossil elk occur. But before describing the incidents 
of the recent exploration, it may be well to make some general 
reference to the gigantic deer once so abundant in the range of 
mountains which extend there in a north-westerly direction from the 
south coast of Dublin Bay, and to the general bearing of the evidence 
as to the probability of its co-existence with man. 
An examination of.the detritus and included fossils, the accumula- 
tions of fossiliferous caves, and the disclosures of peatmosses, shows 
that when the earliest ascertained colonists entered on the occupation 
of the British Islands—whether then insular or continental,—the low 
