THE REINDEER. 65 



ten out of eighteen rivor deposits wliicli have fur- 

 nished fossil mammals, while the Red-deer has been 

 found only in nine."" 



During the arctic severity of the post-glacial climate 

 the remains of the Red-deer were rare, while those 

 of the Reindeer were most abundant. During the 

 pre-historic period the Red-deer gradually increased 

 in numbers, while the Reindeer as gradually became 

 extinct. In its rarity in the latter epoch we have 

 proof of the great climatal change that had taken 

 place in France and Britain. 



Professor Owen, in his " British Fossil Mammals," 

 has figured a skull with antlers of the Reindeer 

 found in a peat- moss on Bilney Moor, near East 

 Dereham, Norfolk, and he gives a figure also of a 

 metatarsal bone of this animal from the fens of 

 Cambridgeshire. During the excavation that was 

 made for the reservoir of the southern outfall of the 

 metropolitan sewage at Crossness Point, on the south 

 side of the Thames, near Erith, a fine antler of the 

 Reindeer was discovered at the bottom of a layer of 

 peat varying from five to fifteen feet in thickness, 

 along with the remains of Beaver and a human skull. 

 Another antler was found in a shell marl underlying 

 the peat near Whit tington Hall, Lancashire. Leigh, 

 in his "Natural History of Cheshire" (Bk. III. p. 84), 

 notices a horn of the Reindeer which was found 

 under a Roman altar at Chester. 



In Ireland, as we learn from a ' Report on Irish 

 Fossil Mammals' by Dr. Leith Adarns (" Proc. Roy. 



* Boyd Dawkins, Popular Science Review, January, 1868. 



