478 CERVUS. 



ment of stages horn in so small a recess of the cave, that 

 it never could have been introduced, unless singly and after 

 separation from the head ; and near it was the molar tooth 

 of an elephant." * 



Similar fragments of shed antlers of the Red-deer, asso- 

 ciated with others referable to the Megaceros and the great 

 Strongyloceros, have been found in Kent's Hole at Torquay ; 

 they all show the effects of gnawing, and indicate that all 

 the three species of Deer co- existed in England with the 

 Hyeena and other extinct carnivora at that remote period. 



In Ireland the remains of the Cervus Elaphus have been 

 frequently found associated, as in the lacustrine marls of 

 Yorkshire, with the Megaceros ; but the most abundant 

 specimens occur in the still more recent turbary and allu- 

 vial deposits of that island. The fine crowned antler, one 

 of a pair discovered in the bed of the Boyne at Drogheda, 

 and now preserved in the Museum of Sir Philip Egerton, 

 (fig. 196,) measures thirty inches in length, and sends off not 

 fewer than fifteen snags or branches. Many instances of 

 the discovery of remains of the Red-deer in the morasses 

 and the lacustrine marls beneath peat-mosses of Scotland, 

 have been recorded, and the chain of evidence of the ex- 

 istence of this species of Deer in Britain, from the pliocene 

 tertiary period to the present time, seems to be unbroken. 

 This at least is certain, that a Deer, undistinguishable by 

 the characters of its enduring remains from the Cervus 

 Elaphus, co- existed with the Megaceros, the spelaean 

 Hysena, the tichorhine Rhinoceros, and the Mammoth, and 

 has survived, as a species, those influences which appear to 

 have caused the extinction of its gigantic associates, as well 

 as of some smaller animals, for example the Trogontherium, 

 the Lagomys, and the still more diminutive Paleeospalax. 



* ' Reliquiae Diluvianae,' p. 32. 



