Dec. lo, 1874] 



NATURE 



113 



analysis of the value of evidence such as that recorded by 

 Dr. jeitteles, whose method and facts appear to be equally 

 in error. 



The identification of fragments of antlers is one of the 

 most difficult tasks which a naturalist can take in hand, 

 and where there are several species of deer associated 

 together in the same deposit, it is sometimes impossible 

 to assign a given fragment to its rightful owner. For 

 example, in the forest beds of Norfolk and Suffolk, and in 

 the Pleiocenes of the Continent, there is a vast number of 

 antlers which are ownerless and which have completely 

 baffled Prof. Gaudry, myself, and others for many years. 

 It is, of course, easy for anyone to classify the flat antler 

 as belonging to one species and the round to another ; 

 but the value of the determination depends upon the 

 number of species living at the same time in the same 

 place, possessed respectively of round and flattened 

 antlers. In the Pleistocene and Prehistoric ages, there 

 were four animals which had portions of their antlers 

 flattened — the Reindeer, Irish Elk, True Elk, and Stag — 

 to which, according to Dr. Jeitteles, must be added the 

 Fallow Deer. In this particular case it is not only 

 assumed that the flat antler fragments belong to the last 

 of these animals, but even the uncertain testimony of 

 various authors, who had not critically e-xamined the re- 

 mains, which they record, in relation to the other species, 

 is taken to prove the range of the Fallow Deer as far 

 north as Denmark. The mere printed reference to the 

 Fallow Deer is accepted as evidence, without, save in two 

 cases, being verified by personal examination. The results 

 of such a method of inquiry seem to me to demand most 

 careful criticism. 



The alleged cases of the discovery of Fallow Deer in 

 Central and Northern Europe are as follows. In Switzer- 

 land, it is stated to have been identified by Dr. Riitimeyer 

 among the animals which had been used for food by the 

 dwellers in the Lake villages ; " although," he writes, 

 " incontrovertible evidence of the spontaneous existence 

 of this deer north of the Alps remains stiU to be obtained " 

 (quoted by Dr. Jeitteles in Nature, vol. xi. p. 72.) In a 

 list of the Swiss mammalia which Dr. Riitimeyer was 

 kind enough to prepare for me in 1873, the animal is 

 altogether omitted from the Pleistocene and Prehistoric 

 Fauna. Thus, in the opinion of this high authority, it 

 was not living in Switzerland in those early days. The 

 animal is stated also (on the authority of Jiiger in 1850) 

 to have been found abundantly in " the caverns and tur- 

 baries as well as in the diluvial freshwater chalk of 

 Wurtemburg." To this I would oppose the opinion of 

 my friend Prof. Oscar Fraas, of Stuttgardt, from whose 

 list of animals (sent to me in 1872) the Fallow Deer is 

 conspicuous by its absence. The Reindeer is abundant 

 in the caves of that region, and to it the flattened frag- 

 ments of antlers may probably be referred. 



To pass over the reputed discovery of the animal " in 

 an old place of sacrifice" near Schlieben, in 1S28, in 

 which the discoverer himself remarks that " the subject 

 requires further investigation," there only remain three 

 other sets of fragments to be examined in Germany. 

 First, those at Olmiitz, which Dr. Riitimeyer considered 

 to belong possibly to the Stag ; secondly, an indistinct 

 figure in the " Ossemens Fossiles," of an antler attached 

 to a skull found at Stuttgardt, which seems to me to 

 belong to the Reindeer ; and lastly, a fragment of 

 antler from Buchberg, which, taken along with the find 

 at Olmiitz, is the second of the two cases identified by 

 Dr. Jeitteles. It is a museum specimen, which may very 

 probably be liable to the same doubts as those which are 

 entertained by Dr. Riitimeyer regarding the fragments 

 from Olmutz. The teeth and bones quoted from Ham- 

 burgh areas likely to belong to the Stag as to the Fallow 

 Deer. 



The alleged instances of the discovery of the animal in 

 this country and in France are equally unsatisfactory. 



The flattened antlers alluded to by Buckland and Owen 

 belong either to the Stag or the Reindeer. Among the 

 many thousands of bones and teeth which I have exa- 

 mined from the ossiferous caves of various ages, from 

 refuse-heaps, and tumuli, I have never seen any fragment 

 which could be attributed to Fallow Deer, except in 

 refuse-heaps not older than the Roman occupation. Nor 

 is it found in Ireland till the Middle Ages. The late 

 lamented Prof. Ed. Lartet, whom I always consulted on 

 difficult questions such as these, believed that the animal 

 was not living in Central and Northern France in the 

 Pleistocene or Prehistoric ages, but that it was imported 

 probably by the Romans. 



The only evidence against this view is that afforded by 

 an antler dug up in Paris and brought to Prof. Gervais 

 along with stone celts by some workmen. It seemed to 

 me when I saw it in 1873, in the Jardin des Plante5,not 

 altogether conclusive, because of the absence of proof that 

 all the remains were obtained from the same undisturbed 

 stratum. I should expect to find such antlers in the 

 refuse-heaps of Roman Paris, as in Roman London, and I 

 should not be at all surprised if the remains of widely differ- 

 ent ages were mingled together by the workmen, even if they 

 were found in the same excavation. As examples of the 

 necessity of guarding against this source of error, I may 

 quote a recent lower jaw of Kangaroo Rat in the collection 

 of my late friend IVIr. Wickham Flower, which was stated 

 to have been dug out of the brick-earth near Sitting- 

 bourne, along with the mammoth and other Pleistocene 

 creatures ; the bones of an ostrich brought to Prof. Busk, 

 along with mammoth and hippopotamus from the gravels 

 of Acton Green ; and lastly, the skeleton of Fallow Deer 

 found in a bog not iar from the River Boyne above 

 Leinster Bridge (Co. Kildarc), along with a skull of 

 Brown Bear (Scott, yoiini. Gcol. 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 con- 

 clude with Drs. Jeitteles and Sclater 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 naturahsts 

 who have examined vast quantities of fossil remains from 

 those regions, implies, to my mind, the probability that the 

 animal was not then in those parts of Europe. The value 

 of negative evidence depends upon the number of obser- 

 vations, which in this case is enormous. To speak per- 

 sonally, I am in the position of a man waiting for satis- 

 factory 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"— a posi- 

 tion which I see no reason to change from the arguments 

 brought forward in Nature. The animal ought to be 

 found fossil in those regions ; and it is not for want of 

 looking 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 discus- 

 sion. The C<>"'us polignacus of Pomel, from Auvergne, 

 is an obscure form without definition, about which I will 

 not venture to say anything. The Cerznts somomnsis 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 {Ouait. GcoLJourti., 1868, 

 p. 514), under the name of Ccrvus brotoiiii. The latter 

 has been identified by Prof Busk among the fossil re- 

 mains from Acton Green. The typical antler of Cuvier's 

 species differs from Plate XVII. Fig. 4 of C. hrowiiii, 

 in the possession of a palm of four points, and in being 

 broken and badly restored with plaster at the point where 



