NOTES AND QUERIES. 



37 



exist which date from a time when the art of building can scarcely be said 

 to have existed in this island, and when invisibility formed the best security 

 against the sudden attacks of an enemy. In Essex "dene holes" are 

 abundant in the district between East Tilbury and Purfleet. In Kent they 

 are especially abundant near the old settlements, or sites for settlements, 

 on the river, at Greenwich, Woolwich, Eritb, and Greenhithe. Their 

 position — one, two, or three miles from the river, and their concentration 

 in spots about the same distance from the natural sites for settlements on 

 the Thames, seem to suggest that they were used both as storehouses and 

 as places of occasional refuge from pirates who might attack the villages on 

 the river-bank. It is proposed to explore the Essex "dene holes" when 

 the work at the Lough ton camp is completed. 



Remains of the Irish Elk near Belfast.— During the last week of 

 November, as some workmen in the employ of Mr. Hugh Montgomery, 

 of Rosemount, were engaged in making a drain in Grangee Bog, about a 

 mile from Grey Abbey, they dug up the principal portion of the head and 

 horns of what is believed to have been an Irish Elk. The antlers from tip 

 to tip measure about ten feet. Subsequently more men were engaged at 

 the same place, when the greater part of a large skeleton was laid bare. 

 The skull and horns were removed to Rosemount House. On previous 

 occasions remains of this animal have been exhumed in this part of County 

 Down. The skeleton was dug out of a lake deposit west of Scrabo Hill, 

 and within two miles of Newtownards. A complete skeleton was discovered 

 between Newtownards aud Donaghadee, and a large specimen was found in 

 Shell Marl, near Quiuten Castle, Poitaferry. 



The Royal Theriotrophium near the Tower of London.— Willughby, 

 in 1678, describing the young of the Golden Eagle, which he terms " the 

 Golden Eagle with a white ring about its tail" (Ornithology, p. 59), 

 observes : — " We saw three birds of this sort in the Royal Theriotrophium 

 near the Tower of London, and a fourth in St. James's Park, near West- 

 minster." Is there any contemporary description of this " Theriotrophium," 

 or Tower Menagerie, extant ? if so, where may it be found ? Pepys has an 

 entry in his ' Diary,' under date 3rd May, 1G62, which thus refers to it :— 

 " To dinner to my Lady Sandwich, and Sir Thomas Crew's children coming 

 thither, I took them and all my Ladys to the Tower and showed them the 

 lions, and all that was to be shown." 



Ossiferous Cave near Cappagh, Co. Waterford.— In 'The Zoologist' 

 for 1879 (p. 331) Mr. R. J. Ussher gave an account of the discovery of an 

 ossiferous cavern near Cappagh, in the Co. Waterford, which he was then 

 engaged in exploring in company with the late Prof. Leith Adams and 

 Mr. G. H. Kinahan. The results of this exploration, geological, zoological, 

 and archaeological, have since been published in a most interesting memoir, 



