210 AN ANCIENT HAUNT OF THE CERVUS MEGACEROS ; 



its limited endurance as a species it contrasts with the reindeer, 

 along side of the fossil remains of which its horns and bones repeatedly 

 occur; and its circumscribed area gives a peculiar interest to 

 any indications of its co-existence with man. The evidence furnished 

 by the abundance of its remains in certain localities tends to suggest 

 the idea that, at a time when the British Islands were only the more 

 elevated portions of the extended continent of Europe, — which then 

 included in one continuous tract the English Channel, the German 

 Ocean, and the Irish Sea, with a prolongation westward, embracing 

 the Atlantic plateau now submerged to the extent of about one 

 hundred fathoms : — the favourite haunts of the Cervus megaceros 

 were in plains and fertile valleys which, throughout the historic 

 period have been mostly buried under the sea. 



In the ingenious speculations of the late Professor Edward Forbes 

 on the migrations of plants and animals to their later insular habitats, 

 he assumed a land passage to Ireland, consisting of the upraised 

 marine drift which had been deposited on the bottom of the glacial 

 sea. Over this he specially noted the presence of numerous remains 

 of the fossil elk in the fresh water marl of his own native Isle of Man. 

 In Scotland, on the contrai'y, where the reindeer existed apparently from 

 the time when it was the contemporary of the mammoth, to a period, 

 historical!}^ speaking, recent, authenticated examples of the Cervus 

 megaceros are extremely rare ; whereas its designation alike as the 

 megaceros Hihemicus, and Irish elk, is based on the occurrence of 

 its skeletons mox^e frequently in Ireland than elsewhere. It has 

 indeed been assumed that there now lie submerged beneath the Irish 

 Sea, the once fertile plains which, towards the close of its existence, 

 constituted the favourite haunt of this magnificent fossil deer. 



It is not until the newer pliocene period is reached that the palaeon- 

 tologist encounters the amply developed horns of the gigantic bisons 

 and uri ; and that a corresponding size characterises for the first 

 time the antlers of the Cervus Sedgwichii, the Cervus dicranios, and of 

 the Cervus 'megaceros, pre-eminently noticeable for the enormous di- 

 mensions of its spreading antlers. Along with the remains of the 

 latter, or in corresponding postpliocene deposits, those of the rein- 

 deer, which still survives both in Northern Europe and in America, 

 are also found, at times in considerable abvxndance. 



At the meeting of the British Association, at Dublin, in 1878, 

 an intelligent local naturalist, Mr. Richard J. Moss, of the Royal 



