482 



CERVUS. 



Fig. 199. 



indigenous in Scotland. " Several hundreds," he observes, 

 "have been procured within the last century, from five or 

 six small lakes in Forfarshire, where shell-marl has been 

 worked." Those of the stag (Cervus elaphus) are the most 

 numerous, and if the others be arranged in the order of 

 their relative abundance, they will follow, according to Mr. 

 Lyell, nearly thus : Ox, Boar, Dog, Hare, Fox, Wolf, and 

 Cat ; the Beaver is the rarest. A pair of Deer's horns of 

 large size, and with fine antlers, together with two meta- 

 carpal bones, " so deeply grooved as to appear like double 

 bones," were dug up out of a marl-pit beneath five or six 

 feet of peat-moss, on the margins of the Loch of Marlee. In 

 the same place were found the remains of the Beaver noticed 

 at p. 194. Mr. Neill, who has recorded both these disco- 

 veries, says, with regard to the deeply-grooved 

 leg-bones, " It has been suggested to me by Dr. 

 Barclay, that they were probably the metatarsal 

 bones of the great species of Deer, which ap- 

 pears to have been contemporary with the 

 Beaver, and to have become extinct much about 

 the same period with that animal."* If the 

 Megaceros Hibernicus be the species here referred 

 to, the character of the deep-grooved meta- 

 carpal bone will not at all apply to it, since 

 the median longitudinal groove is wider and 

 shallower on both the fore and back part of the 

 metacarpals and metatarsals in the Megaceros 

 than in any other species of Deer ; the Rein- 

 deer is most remarkable for the depth of the 

 grooves, especially the posterior one of the meta- 

 Metatarsalof t arsus j w \\\ no t venture to pronounce, in 



Rem-deer, 



natsize. Fens, the absence of the specimens, and of any know- 



* ' Jamieson's Edinburgh Philosophical Journal,' vol. i. 1819, p. 183. 



\ 



