OR, GREAT IRISH DEER. 213 



grounds were extensively traversed by a net-work of lakes', and the 

 surrounding country was covered with forest, and overrun by animals 

 known to us now chiefly by the researches of the palseontologist. But 

 also it is among the glimpses which that prolonged ti^ansitional period 

 furnishes, that we catch, towards its prehistoric close, evidence not 

 only of the presence of man, but of the introduction of the domesticated 

 animals of Europe. Among its fossil mammalia the true Cervidce, 

 to which the Irish elk belongs, appear to be, geologically speaking, 

 of recent origin. No remains of extinct genera of the deer family 

 thus far discovered in either hemisphere have been found to extend 

 farther back than the upper mioscene ; and Mr. A. Russel Wallace 

 recognises the whole family as an Old World group which passed first 

 to North America, and subsequently to the Southern continent. The 

 remains of many extinct species belonging to existing genera occur 

 in the post-pliocene and recent deposits both of Europe and America ; 

 but no representative of the deer family has thus far been found in 

 South Africa or Australia. 



Of the numerous ascertained fossil deer many forms are known 

 only by fragmentary remains ; but few great collections of Natural 

 History fail to possess a well preserved skeleton of the Irish elk. 

 Strictly speaking the Cervus megaceros is not a true elk, like the 

 living Moose (Aloes palmatus). It takes its place intermediately 

 between the Reindeer and the Fallow deer [Damia vulgaris), and has 

 its living analogues in the European Red Deer [Cervus elaphus), and 

 the Wapiti (Cervus Canadensis) of the American Continent. The 

 abundance of its remains in some localities, as in the' Bally betagh 

 Bog, their high state of preservation, and their position generally in 

 bogs and lacustrine deposits, overlaid by bog oak and other remains 

 of the latest forests ; and at times by actual evidences of human art : 

 all tend to suggest the idea of this gigantic deer having co- 

 existed with man. It was contemporaneous, not only with the 

 mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and other extinct European mam- 

 malia of a like unfamiliar type, but also with an important group of 

 wild animals which not only survived into that transitional period 

 in which the geologist and the archaeologist meet on common ground ; 

 but some of which have still their living representatives. Of the 

 former the gigantic Urus (Bos primigenius) is the most notable, 

 with its recognized relationship to the larger domesticated cattle of 

 modern Europe. Of the latter the most interesting is the Reindeer. 



