FOSSIL HORNS. 9 



his horns ill grown, and inferior to the other, he will, upon 

 examination, be found to have a gun-shot, or some other 

 bad wound, on the side where the horn is faulty. 



Many horns of the Cervus Elaphus have been found in 

 peat bogs and shell marl ; and, as these have the os frontis 

 attached to them, they could not have been cast in the 

 ordinary way ; but must either have belonged to deer that 

 died of old age or disease, or to such as might have been 

 mired in endeavouring to land, where the bottom was soft 

 and quaggy. Many, probably, have perished in this way, 

 as the horns are generally found in an upright position. 

 A vast quantity of these horns, and, indeed, whole 

 skeletons of deer, have been found, within this last century, 

 in the small lakes of Forfarshire.* Indeed, antlers and 

 skeletons of full grown stags are amongst the most common 

 remains of animals in peat. Horns so found are infinitely 

 larger than any which I have ever seen on living animals 

 of the same species. 



It must be inferred, therefore, that the animals themselves 

 were likewise of very superior dimensions. At first sight 

 this seems difficult to account for ; but when we take into 

 consideration the altered circumstances of the country, 

 that immense tracts of wood have given place to barren 

 bogs, in the manner explained by Mr. Lyell, and mentioned 

 in the course of these pages, and that the deer have thus 

 been limited in food and shelter, we can no longer be at 

 a loss to account for this degeneracy. 



The red deer is not a very hardy animal : he does not 

 by choice subsist on coarse food, but eats close, like a 

 sheep. With his body weakened and wasted during the 

 * Vide Lyell's Geology, vol. ii. p. 259, 



