222 AN ANCIENT HAUNT OF THE CERVUS MEGACEROS ; 
malia of prehistoric Ireland. Its range, alike in place and in time, 
appears to have been more circumscribed than that of most, if not 
all of the animals with which it is found associated in post-pliocene 
deposits. Traces of it, indeed, have not only been noted to the south 
of the Alps, but Professor Brandt has identified its remains among — 
the cave disclosures of the Altai Mountains. But on both continents 
it had a similar temperate range; and no remains of it have been dis" 
covered in the extreme north of Europe. To this the nature of: its 
food may have contributed; while the mammoth and the reindeer 
were able to subsist within the Arctic circle, as well as in temperate 
ranges common to them and to the gigantic elk. But circumscribed 
though the range of the latter appears to have been, its enormous 
dimensions, conjoined with seemingly gregarious habits, were incom- 
patible with limits so greatly restricted as the Isle of Man, if not 
indeed with those of Ireland; and hence the probability of the 
assumption that its extinction preceded, or speedily followed the 
period when the British Islands became detached from the Continent 
of Europe. 
The Cervus megaceros attained a height of nearly eleven feet, and 
bore an enormous pair of antlers, measuring at times nearly fourteen 
feet from tip to tip. The head, with its ponderous pair of antlers, 
is estimated to have exceeded 100 Ibs. in weight when living. To 
this the frequent miring of the deer in the lakes and bogs, where 
their remains abound, has been ascribed ; nor is it improbable that 
the ultimate extinction of the species may have been due to the 
abnormal development of such head-gear, while its large antlered con- 
temporary, the Reindeer, still survives. 
Mr. R. J.. Moss was led from his former careful observations to 
conclude that Ballybetagh Bog occupies the site of an ancient lake 
or tarn which stretched along the bottom of the glen. The west 
side of the glen is flanked by the southern side of a hill, and another 
of less elevation hems it in on the east. The embouchure of the 
lake appears to have been at the southern end; and whether 
we assume that the deer when swimming across the lake got eutangled 
in the stiff clay at the bottom, and so were drowned ; or that they 
resorted to the lake to die, it would seem that their bodies drifted 
with the current to the outlet of the lake, and hence the enormous 
accumulation of their remains in one place. In describing one of 
the trenches opened by him,’Mr. Moss says; ‘“ At the north end 
