260 EAKLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. vm. 



considers that the Chillingham cattle are the half-tame 

 descendants from a long ancestry of wild British uri ; 

 and this view we shall examine in the fourteenth 

 chapter, in dealing with the British mammalia in the 

 Historic period. The urus, however, lived in the forests 

 covering Central Germany as late as the sixteenth 

 century. 



The moose, or true elk, has been met with in several 

 localities in the peat bogs of Northumberland, and in 

 Yorkshire. In 1871 my attention was drawn to a mag- 

 nificent head, with the antlers, found in 1828 near 

 Williestmther Loch, Hawick, by Sir "Walter Elliot, 

 Bart., its present possessor. A second skull, obtained 

 from Berwickshire, was exhibited at the British Associa- 

 tion in Edinburgh by Dr. G. A. Smith, to whom we are 

 indebted for an essay 1 on these and many other speci- 

 mens, which prove that the animal was by no means 

 uncommon in North Britain. In the south it has been 

 found only at Walthamstow, along with the goat, Celtic 

 short-horn, and reindeer. 2 



The reindeer occupied the same parts of Prehistoric 

 Britain as the moose. In the south it has been found 

 in the Thames valley, at the southern outfall near Erith, 

 along with the beaver, Celtic short-horn, goat, horse, and 

 a human skull, at the bottom of a layer of peat, fifteen 

 to twenty feet in thickness ; and it has been discovered 

 under similar conditions in the excavations carried on 

 for the Victoria Docks. 3 Eare in England, it is proved 



1 Proceed. Soc. Antiq. Scot. ix. 52. 2 Geol. Mag. vi. 339. 



3 A fine antler was obtained from the clayey gravel below the peat, by 

 Mr. Andros, in these excavations on the north side of the Thames. It 

 was exhibited, on 26th February 1879, at a meeting of Erith and Belvedere 

 Nat. Hist. Society. 



