OR, GREAT IRISH DEER. 217 
from Loch Gur, County Limerick.* The opinion which is now 
generally accepted is that these abrasions and indentations are due to 
the juxtaposition of the sharp point or edge of one bone and the 
side of another, while subjected to a prolonged immersion in the moist 
clay or marl. But to this it is further assumed must be superadded 
the combined action of friction with pressure consequent on the 
motion of the bogs in which such bones are embedded. The bogg 
ground in which they chiefly occur is subject not only to a perpen- 
dicular oscillation, consequent on any vibration from passing weights 
shaking the ground, or even from the wind; but also it undergoes a 
periodical contraction and expansion by the alternate drying and 
saturating with moisture, in the summer and winter months; and 
thus indentations and cuttings, like those ordinarily ascribed to a 
flint knife or saw, are of frequent occurrence on the bones of the 
great fossil deer. To this subject Dr. A. Carte drew the attention of 
the Royal Geological Society of Dublin, in 1866, in a paper, entitled: 
“On some Indented Bones of the Cervus megaceros, found near 
Lough Gur, County Limerick,” and I am now enabled to exhibit 
for your own inspection additional illustrations from the same locality 
illustrative of this phenomenon, furnished to me by Mr. Pride, 
Assistant-Curator of the University Museum. 
In some of those the indentations ure such as tew would hesitate 
at first sight to ascribe to an artificial origin ; and so to adduce them 
as evidence of the contemporaneous presence of man. But they occur, 
not on separate bones, but on portions of fossil skeletons recovered 
from the lough under circumstances which wholly preclude the idea 
that they had been detached and carried off for purposes of art ; or 
that the indentations upon them can have been the work of human 
hands. 
Professor Jukes was present when Dr. Carte’s paper was read, and 
referred to former statements of his opposed to the idea of the con- 
temporaneous presence in Ireland of man and the Cervus megaceros. 
“They knew,” he said, “ that man did exist contemporaneously with 
that animal in England ; and then arose the geological question, was 
Treland at that time already separated from England and the conti- 
nent? Was the great plain which formerly connected the British 
* The principal bones of a nearly complete skeleton of the Cervus megaceros, from Loch Gur, 
were exhibited to the Canadian Institute ; and the various characteristic indentations, on what 
must have been an undisturbed skeleton in situ, were pointed out. 
