On the Recent and Extinct Irish Mammals. 83 
Deer from “marl underlying bog” near Bohoe,* in the county of 
Fermanagh, where several skeletons were discovered, but none 
of the horns and bones found in that situation attain to the dimen- 
sions of the large animal of the caves and later Tertiary beds of 
England, although precisely alike in their skeletons. But although 
the horns do not appear to attain the massive proportions of 
many of the latter, the throstle nest termination of the antler is 
often well developed. The Red Deer accompanied all the extinct 
Trish mammals with whose remains it has been found in caves 
and sub-turbary deposits. It still struggles on in the island, but, 
like the Red Indian, it is on its last reservation. 
Neither the fallow nor the roe deer, nor the moose or elk, have 
any valid claim to be considered Irish mammals. The horn 
supposed to have established the presence of the Elk in Ireland, 
and referred to by Thompson, I have seen in his collection in 
Beifast, but the specimen is clearly not fossil and belongs to a 
recent individual. The animal has left its remains both in Scot- 
land and England, and, being a forest living deer, it is strange that 
it never found its way into Ireland. 
No bovine remains referable to feral species have, as far as I 
can learn, turned up in Ireland. Historians mention wild cattle, 
which may have been only domesticated animals run wild.§— 
Remains of the short horn (Bos longifrovs) are plentiful in pre- 
historic and ancient Irish dwellings, such as raths and crannoges, 
and many skulls found in these situations show their frontals 
battered by the poll-axe. There is a fine collection of crania of 
this old Celtic ox and one or two of the allied breed (Bos fron- 
tosus) in the Museum of Science and Art, mostly from the famous 
erannoge of Dunshaughlin already referred to, the contents of 
which have been faithfully described by the late Sir William 
Wilde.|| Remains of the short horn have been found in abun- 
dance in caves along with relics of other domesticated animals 
* Observations on the fossil Red Deer of Ireland. Jour. Geol. Soc. Dublin, vol. x., 
ps 12am 
t Report British Association 1840, p. 362, Nat. Hist., vol. i, p. 35. 
¢ Smith, Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland, No. ix., p. 297. 
§ Ball, Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., vol. ii, p. 541; and Wilde, vol. iii., p. 183. 
|| Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., vol. i., p. 420, and vol. vii., p. 181. 
Soren. Proc. B.D.S., Vou. 11., Pr. 1 G2 
