454 CERVUS. 



the relative size of the antlers to the body comes nearest to 

 the peculiar proportions of those appendages in the Mega- 

 ceros. 



The brow-antler, and the expansion of the beam into a 

 palm, brings the Megaceros, as Colonel Hamilton Smith 

 first showed, into that group of the Cervine family to 

 which the Fallow-deer belongs, this species being, perhaps, 

 the nearest existing representative of the gigantic extinct 

 species; but in the Fallow-deer, (fig. 191) all the branches 

 above the bezantler (bz) are sent off from the posterior mar- 

 gin and end of the palm, while in the Megaceros they are all, 

 with one exception, sent off from the anterior and terminal 

 margin. The brow-antler (br) in the Fallow-deer is always 

 simple, cylindrical, and pointed ; in the Megaceros it is 

 often expanded and sometimes bifurcate at the end, but 

 never so long or so ramified as in the Rein-deer. With 

 justice, therefore, might Cuvier, who had pursued the com- 

 parison of the antlers through all the known species of Deer, 

 affirm that " the inspection of the head and antlers alone of 

 the ' Cerf a bois gigantesques ' suffices to assure us that it 

 is an extinct animal, like the long-headed Ehinoceros, the 

 little Hippopotamus, the Elephant with long tusk-sockets, 

 and the gigantic Tapir,* which, if they belong to known 

 genera, are not the less unknown, as species, on the actual 

 surface of the earth." -f- 



In fact, the antlers of the great Irish Deer, combining 

 some of the characters of those of the Elk, the Rein-deer, 

 and the Fallow, with others peculiar to themselves, compel 

 the zoologist, guided by the principles so admirably wrought 

 out by Colonel Hamilton Smith | for the subgeneric ar- 



* Now known as the still more extraordinary Dinothere, of which not only the 

 species but the genus has passed away, 

 t Op. cit. p. 82. 

 t Griffith's Cuvier, 8vo. vol. iv. 1827. 



