FOSSIL ELK OF IRELAND, 487 



name of the horns of " the old deer." Indeed in some 

 parts of the country they have been found so often, that 

 far from being regarded as objects of any extraordinary 

 interest, they have been either thrown aside as lumber, 

 or applied to the commonest economical uses *. 



" I have made diligent but fruitless search for an ac- 

 count of the particular time when any of these remains 

 were first discovered. As they generally occur in marl, 

 it is most likely that they did not begin to attract atten- 

 tion until the advanced state of agriculture had created 

 an increased demand for that mineral as a manure. We 

 can very easily imagine the astonishment which the ap- 

 pearance of horns so large, and of such strange form, 

 must have excited in the minds of those who discovered 

 them for the first time, and how readily they obtained a 

 place in the hall of some "adjoining mansion, where they 

 were deposited as an ornament of great curiosity, from 

 the contrast which they formed with the horns of the 

 species of deer known at present. In this way we may 

 account for the preservation of so many specimens as are 

 found in the possession of the gentry in different parts 

 of this country. 



" Very lately an entire skeleton of the Irish Elk was 

 dug up in that country. The following statement of the cir- 



* In a Report which Mr Hart made to the Committee of Natu- 

 ral Philosophy of the Royal Dublin Society, and which was printed 

 in their Proceedings of July 8. 1824, he alluded to an instance of a 

 pair of these horns having been used as a field gate near Tipperary. 

 Since that he has learned that a pair had been in use for a similar 

 purpose near Newcastle, county of Wicklow, until they were de- 

 composed by the action of the weather. There is also a specimen in 

 Charlemont House, the town residence of the Earl of Charlemont, 

 which is said to have been used for some time as a temporary bridge 

 across a rivulet in the county of Tyrone. 



