480 CERVUS. 



drawings by Colonel Hamilton Smith are representations, 

 were found by me some time since during some researches 

 made with the Rev. H. F. Lyte in a cavern in the lime- 

 rock of Berry head, Devon. The skull was at a great 

 depth below the original floor of the cave, and was lying in 

 an aluminous silt, and buried beneath a block of limerock 

 many tons in weight, which had no doubt, subsequently to 

 the deposit of the skull, fallen from the roof on it. Not 

 quite so deeply buried, but adhering to the side of the block 

 by a calcareous cement, I found the other bone, the hume- 

 rus. No bones of any kind were associated with them, and 

 although the lower jaw and horns of the skull were wanting, 

 yet no fragment of bone or organized calcareous matter 

 was near or anywhere around : the tooth fell from the 

 skull on taking it up. They were in a dry situation, and 

 about forty feet perpendicular from the opening of the 

 cave, which is situated in the side of a precipitous hill 

 about seventy feet above the level of the sea. 11 



The fragment of the skull (fig. 198) showed the places 

 from which the antlers had been recently shed, and, by their 

 proximity to the occipital ridge, determined the identity 

 of the fossil with the Cervus tarandus. In the Fallow and 

 Red-deer, as in all other recent cervine species correspond- 

 ing in size with the fossil, the antlers spring from the 

 frontal bones nearer the orbits and further from the occi- 

 put. The extinct Cervus Guettardi most resembles the 

 Rein-deer in the position of the antlers ; but, besides the 

 smaller size of the skull, the antlers rise a little further 

 from the occiput. The precise agreement of the fragment 

 of the skull, of the molar tooth, and of the humerus, in 

 size and form, with those parts in the Rein-deer, verifies 

 the inference from the characteristic position of the antlers, 

 as to the species to which the fossils belong. 



