XXVI INTRODUCTION. 



It is well known that the antlers of deer are shed and 

 renewed annually ; and a male may be reckoned to leave 

 about eight pairs of antlers, besides its bones, to testify 

 its former existence upon the earth : but, as the female 

 has usually no antlers, our expectations might be limited 

 to the discovery of four times as many pairs of antlers as 

 skeletons in the superficial deposits of the countries in 

 which such deer have lived and died. The actual pro- 

 portion of the fossil antlers of the great extinct species 

 of British pliocene Deer, which antlers are proved by the 

 form of their base to have been shed by the living ani- 

 mals, to the fossil bones of the same species is some- 

 what greater than in the above calculation. Although, 

 therefore, it may be contended that the swollen carcase 

 of a drowned exotic Deer might be borne along a diluvial 

 wave to a considerable distance, and its bones ultimately 

 be deposited far from its native soil, it is not credible 

 that all the solid shed antlers of such species of Deer could 

 be carried by the same cause to the same distance ; or 

 that any of them could be rolled for a short distance with 

 other heavy debris of a mighty torrent, without fracture 

 and signs of friction. But the shed antlers of the large 

 extinct species of Deer found in this island and in Ireland 

 have commonly their points or branches entire as when 

 they fell ; and the fractured specimens are generally found 

 in caves, and show marks of the teeth of the ossivorous 

 Hyaenas, by which they had been gnawed, thus at the 

 same time revealing the mode in which they were intro- 

 duced into those caves, and proving the contemporaneous 

 existence in this island of both kinds of Mammalia.* 



The perfect condition, and the sharply defined processes, 



* See the beautiful and conclusive reasoning of Dr. Buckland on this subject, 

 in his ' Reliquiae Diluvianae, 1 pp. 19 24. 



