30 APPENDIX: NOS. XXVIII.—XXIX. 
Black Rat as well as the Common Rat, is found there; and the 
Black Rat is there called the Blue Rat, which name is well applied 
from the colour of the animal. One man told me that this Blue 
Rat was said to have come in a shipwrecked Norway vessel: hence 
I think the story is traced to its origin. 
3 Roxburgh Terrace, Edinburgh, 
November 16, 1848. 
XXVIII. 
Tue Rein DEER IN ORKNEY. 
[‘ Zoologist,’ vii. (1849) p. 2345. ] 
A sma pair of horns of the Rein Deer, still attached to part of 
skull, were found in the island of Sanday not long ago, and are now 
in the Kirkwall Museum. At the back of the skull there are still 
traces of ligament, which would indicate the relic to be of no great 
antiquity. It is said that Rein Deer were once introduced into these 
islands, and that it was so appears probable from their horns not 
being more frequently met with in the more modern formations of 
our islands. Owen tells us, nevertheless, that at one period—that 
of the Hyzenas—they did exist here. 
3 Roxburgh Terrace, Edinburgh, 
November 16, 1848. 
EOS. 
Tue Evroprean Ex. 
[‘ Zoologist,’ vii. (1849) p. 2345. ] 
Tis animal has escaped a place in any of Mr. Van Voorst’s series of 
books illustrative of British Natural History ; yet that it should not 
have been a contemporary of the Wild Bull, the Aurochs and the 
Rein Deer, in our ancient forests, seems, « priori, improbable; 
accordingly we find its remains have been discovered in Scotland. 
Mr. Owen mentions [Brit. Foss. Mamm. and B. p. 483] a donation 
to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of “a painting in oils of the head 
and horns of an Elk, found in a marl-pit, Forfarshire,” but he 
suggests that they belonged to a Rein Deer, not having seen them. 
The painting now in the College Museum of Natural History is 
evidently that of the head and horns of the European Elk,—not of 
the Great Irish Deer, the Rein Deer, or the Fallow Deer. 
3 Roxburgh Terrace, Edinburgh, 
November 16, 1848. 
