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I THE ALCINE DEER OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLDS. 61 



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mammoth boiios, could now exist in that icy wilderness. 

 On these grounds a high anti(iuity is claimed for tho 

 sul)-genus Alcea, probably as great as that of the rein- 

 deer. 



As a Britisli fossil mammal, the true elk has not yet 

 been descril)ed, though for a long time tho remains of 

 the now well-defined sub-genus Megaceros were ascribed 

 to the former animal. Then^. is a statement, however, in 

 a recent volume of the " Zoologist " to the effect that the 

 painting of a deer's head an<l horns, which were dug out 

 of a marl pit in Forfarshire, and presented to the Royal 

 Society of >](linl)urgh, is n^ferablo to neither the fallow, 

 1 red, nor extinct Irish deer, but to the elk, which may be 

 ;{' therefore re'^arded as having once inhabited Scotland. 



,/a " ^ 



I The only recorded instance of its occurrence in England 



I is the discovery, a few years since, of a single horn at the 

 bottom of a bog on the Tync. It was found lying on, 

 not in, the drift, and therefore can be only regarded as 



^ recent. 



9 Passing on to prehistoric times, when the remains of 

 the species found in connexion with human implements 

 prove its subserviency as an article of food to the hunters 

 of old, we find the bones of Cervus Alces in the Swiss 

 lake dwellings, and the refuse-heaps of that agy ; whilst 

 in a recent work on travel in Palestine by the Rev. IT. 

 B. Tristram, we have evidence of the great and ancient 

 fauna which then overspread temperate Europe and Asia 



1 luiving had a yet more southerly extension, for he dis- 

 covers a limestone cavern in the Lebanon, near Beyrout, 

 containing a breccious deposit teeming with the iUhris of 

 the feasts of prehistoric man — flint chippings, evidently 

 used as knives, mixed with bones in fragments and teeth, 



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