92 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
River Boyne above Leinster Bridge (Co. Kildare), along with a 
skull of Brown Bear (Scott, Journ. Geol. Soc. Dublin, vol. x. p. 151). 
This last case would have been taken as decisive that the animal 
lived in Ireland in prehistoric times as a contemporary of the 
Brown Bear, had not a silver collar round its neck proved that it 
had belonged to “a member of Lord Rosse’s family.” 
From premises so unsatisfactory as those which have been 
examined, it seems to me very hazardous to conclude with Dr. 
Jeitteles that the Fallow Deer inhabited Northern and Central 
Europe in the pleistocene and prehistoric ages. The point, to say 
the very least, is non-proven. On the other hand, the non-discovery 
of certain relics of the animal by the many able naturalists who 
have examined vast quantities of fossil remains from those regions, 
implies, to my mind, jhe probability that the animal was not then 
in those parts of Europe. The value of negative evidence depends 
upon the number of observations, which in this case is enormous. 
To speak personally, I am in the position of'a man waiting for 
satisfactory proof, holding that up to the present time the common 
Fallow Deer “has never been found to occur in the fossil state in 
Northern and Central Europe. The animal ought to be fonnd 
fossil in those regions; and it is not for want of ooking that it has 
not yet been found. 
For the sake of clearness, I have reserved the reference to other 
forms of deer, in the essay, for separate discussion. The Cervus 
polignacus of Pomel, from Auvergne, is an obscure form without 
definition, about which I will not venture to say anything. The 
C. somonensis of Cuvier, which I have carefully studied in Paris 
along with Prof. Gervais, is identical with the form which I have 
described from Clacton, Essex (Quart. Geol. Journ., 1868, p. 514), 
under the name of Cervus Brownii. The latter has been identified 
by Prof. Busk among the fossil remains from Acton Green. The 
typical antler of Cuvier’s species differs from plate xvii., fig. 4 of 
C. Brownii, in the possession of a palm of four points, and in being 
broken and badly restored with plaster at the point where the third 
tine, d, of my figure joins the beam. Whether this kind of antler 
belongs to a well-marked variety of Fallow Deer or toa closely- 
allied species, I will not offer an opinion. It seems, however, safer 
to follow Professors Lartet, Gaudry, and most of the naturalists 
since the days of Cuvier, in keeping the fossil separate from the 
living forms, none of which present, so far as 1 know, a similar 
