338 Batt—Fossil Mammalia of Ireland. 
bones, split as though for the extraction of the marrow, in conjunction with stone 
implements, &c., in the caves of Ballynamintra, near Cappagh, county Waterford.* 
There are many examples in the Museum of Irish elk bones and antlers having 
been cut, worn, or polished by mutual attrition, when in contact with one another, 
and enveloped in the clay underlying peat. This fact might be adduced in 
favour of the existence of earth tremors. 
The collection includes a large variety of skulls, numbering altogether about 
fifty. In one (plate xi, fig. i.) recently acquired, the palmate portion of the right 
antler and beam are bifurcate, showing possibly a tendency to approximate 
to the more branched forms of horns seen in other species of deer. Other 
pairs of horns, very much stunted, belonged to very old or perhaps emasculated 
individuals. From two skulls both antlers have been cast. The Museum possesses 
only two (hornless) skulls of hinds, one of which is mounted with a complete 
skeleton. 
The rarity of the skulls of the hinds and the bones of the skeleton, when 
compared with the abundance of the skulls of stags with the antlers attached, is 
probably due to the latter having been anchored by entanglement in mud and 
stones, by means of which they were secured from removal by river currents. 
In some cases the bones have been taken from clay or marl, underneath a 
covering of fifty feet of peat. When the peat is shallow, and search is regularly 
made, the position of the bones is generally ascertained by means of long probing- 
irons. 
It would not be possible now to enumerate all the localities in Ireland where 
remains of this stag have been found, the records being incomplete. The following 
have proved specially prolific:—the plain of Limerick; Turloughmore, near Tuam, 
and the margin of Lough Derg, near Mountshannon, both in county Galway ; Kill- 
owen, county Wexford; Ballybetagh bog, near Kiltiernan, county Dublin, where 
remains of upwards of 100 individuals were found by Mr. R. J. Moss and others. 
In Great Britain, Megaceros, or Irish elk remains, are rare, but have been 
discovered in peaty mud near Newbury, in Berkshire, in the Isle of Man, and in 
mud below the peat in the parish of Maybole, Ayrshire. They have been found 
in Germany, and other parts of a central temperate zone in Europe. The caves 
of the Altai indicate the most eastern limit of the ascertained range of the 
animal. 
6.—THE REINDEER. 
Cervus tarandus. 
The only evidence that the reindeer was contemporary with man in Ireland is 
imperfect, being afforded by the discovery of what are supposed to be its bones in 
* See on this subject, however, Jow. D. G. S. 1862, vol. ix., p. 3840; and Edin. Jour. of Science, 
N.S., 18380, vol. ii., p. 806, &c. 
