OR, GREAT IRISH DEER. 215 
So far as evidence thus far points no traces of human art suggest 
' the presence of man either in Scotland or in Ireland, at the period of 
paleolithic art, so abundantly illustrated in the contents of the caves 
and river gravels of southern England. But the Irish elk is not only 
the latest‘among the extinct mammalia of Kurope’s paleolithic period ; 
it is recognized as surviving into its neolithic period. Its remains 
occur in the caves of the reindeer period in southern France, as in 
those of Laugerie Basse and Moustier; and artificially worked 
and carved bones of the reindeer have been recognized in 
more than one of the Swiss caves. Their presence has excited 
special attention in that of L’ Echelle, between the great and little 
Saléve, from its close vicinity to Geneva, owing to the proof it affords 
of the coexistence of man and the reindeer within the area which 
subsequently formed the hunting ground of the lake-dwellers of 
Switzerland ; whilst no trace of either the megaceros or the reindeer 
has been found among their abundant illustrations of the arts alike 
of the neolithic, and of the bronze period. 
The weight of evidence thus tends to favour the idea that the 
fossil elk was coexistent with the men of Europe’s Paleolithic age, by 
whom the reindeer was so largely turned to account, alike for food 
and the supply of material for their primitive arts ; while it became 
extinct long before the more enduring reindeer withdrew entirely 
beyond the temperate zone. In Ireland, however, as_ hereafter 
noted, the abundant remains of its great fossil deer occur, geologically 
speaking, so nearly upon the horizon of its prehistoric dawn, and so 
little removed from some of the primitive evidences of man’s presence 
there, that it will excite little surprise should further evidence of a 
wholly indisputable character demonstrate the survival of the Cervus 
megaceros within the Neolithic period, and contemporaneously with 
man ; asin the remoter age of the Drift Folk of southern England 
it is now believed to have been an object of the chace, and a source 
of food, clothing, and tools. 
When once it is admitted that the great fossil deer was contem- 
poraneous with the men of central Europe, in its Reindeer period ; 
and has to be included among the fauna familiar to the Drift Folk 
of southern England: this special question as to its survival 
in Treland within any period of the presence of man has its chief 
value in relation to his own advent there; for this is not a mere 
question of geographical distribution, but deals with the relative 
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