212 AN ANCIENT HAUNT OF THE CERVUS MEGAOEROS ; 



An account of this exploration was coutiibnted by Mr. Moss to the 

 Royal Irish Academy in which he thus describes the formation under 

 which the fossil remains lay : " The fii'st foot of material removed 

 consisted of peat ; under this there was a stratum of sand of an 

 average depth of about two feet. The sand lay .upon a brown 

 coloured clay which extended for about two feet, and lay upon a bed 

 of granite boulders. The spaces between the lower parts of the 

 boulders were filled with a fine bluish-grej' clay." Here amongst 

 the boidders, and surroiinded with the brown clay, nineteen skulls, 

 with many broken pieces of horn and bones were found ,• and the 

 result in all was the recovery of thirty-six skulls with antlers more 

 or less imperfect, mostly belonging to young deer, along with 

 detached horns and bones, representing in all about fifty individuals 

 of the Cervus megaceros. Among the specimens recovered at the 

 earlier date about thirty individuals of the same gigantic fossil deer 

 had been repi'esented ; although both explorations involved only a 

 very partial examination of this remarkably rich lacustrine deposi- 

 toiy. But the result of Mr. Moss' careful investigation was to 

 determine the precise locality where research might be I'enewed to 

 like advantage, at any future time ; and here it was accordingly that 

 a party of members of the British Association were invited io join him 

 iti hunting the Irish elk in its ancient habitat among the Wicklow 

 meres. 



The scene of this interesting exploration is the site of an ancient 

 tarn, where for ages the moss has been accumulating, till a peat 

 formation of varying thickness overlies a sandy clay intermingled 

 with forms of vegetable matter, an^ at times with fallen trunks of 

 trees. The whole rests on a bed of clay interspersed with granite 

 boulders, as already described. Among these, but not below them, 

 the bones of the fossil elk occur. But before describing the incidents 

 of the recent exploration, it may be well to make some general 

 reference to the gigantic deer once so abundant in the range of 

 mountains which extend there in a north-westerly direction from the 

 south coast of Dublin Bay, and to the general bearing of the evidence 

 as to the probability of its co-existence with man. 



An examination of the detritus and included fossils, the accumula- 

 tions of fossiliferous caves, and the disclosures of peatmosses, shows 

 that when the earliest ascertained colonists entered on the occupation 

 of the British Islands — whether then insular or continental, — the low 



