504 FOSSIL ELK OF IRELAND. 



ther man inhabited this country during its existence ? 

 I think there is presumptive evidence in the affirmative 

 of this question, afforded by the following circumstances. 

 A head of this animal described by Professor Goldfuss 

 of Bonn, was discovered in Germany in the same drain 

 with several urns and stone hatchets ; and in the 7th 

 volume of the Archaeologia Britannica, is a letter of 

 the Countess of Moira, giving an account of a human 

 body found in gravel, under eleven feet of peat soaked 

 in the bog water : it was in good preservation, and 

 completely clothed in antique garments of hair, which 

 her ladyship thinks might have been that of our fossil 

 animal. But more conclusive evidence on this ques- 

 tion is derived from the appearance exhibited by a rib, 

 presented by Archdeacon Maunsell to the Royal Dub- 

 lin Society, in which I discovered an oval opening 

 near its lower edge, the long diameter of which is 

 parallel to the length of the rib, its margin is depressed 

 on the outer, and raised on the inner surface, round 

 which there is an irregular effusion of callus. This 

 opening had been evidently produced by a sharp pointed 

 instrument, which did not penetrate so deep as to cause 

 the animal's death, but which remained fixed in the 

 opening for some length of time afterward ; in fact 

 it was such an effect as would be produced by the head of 

 an arrow remaining in a wound after the shaft was broken 

 off*. 



* I am well aware of the occasional existence of holes in the ribs, 

 a few instances of which I have seen in the human subject : but 

 they differ essentially in character from the opening here described, 

 as they occupy the centre of the rib, mostly in its sternal extremity, 

 and have their margin depressed on both sides. 



