OR, GREAT IRISH DEER. 215 



So far as evidence thus far points no traces of human art suggest 

 the presence of man either in Scotland or in Ireland, at the period of 

 palaeolithic art, so abundantly illustrated in the contents of the caves 

 and river gravels of southern England. But the Ii-ish elk is not only 

 the latest among the extinct mammalia of Europe's palaeolithic pei-iod ; 

 it is recognized as surviving into its neolithic period. Its remains 

 occur in the caves of the reindeer period in southern France, as in 

 those of Laugerie Basse and Moustier ; and artificially worked 

 and carved bones of the reindeer have been recognized in 

 more than one of the Swiss caves. Their presence has excited 

 special attention in that of L' Echelle, between the great and little 

 Sal^ve, from its close vicinity to Geneva, owing to the proof it affords 

 of the coexistence of man and the reindeer within the area which 

 subsequently formed the hunting ground of the lake-dwellei's of 

 Switzerland ; whilst no trace of either the megaceros or the reindeer 

 has been found among their abundant illustrations of the arts alike 

 of the neolithic, and of the bronze period. 



The weight of evidence thus tends to favour the idea that the 

 fossil elk was coexistent with the men of Europe's Palaeolithic age, by 

 whom the reindeer was so largely turned to account, alike for food 

 and the supply of material for their primitive arts ; while it became 

 extinct long before the more enduring reindeer withdrew entirely 

 beyond the temperate zone. In Ireland, however, ^s hereafter 

 noted, the abundant remains of its great fossil deer occur, geologically 

 speaking, so nearly upon the horizon of its prehistoric dawn, and so 

 little removed from some of the primitive evidences of man's presence 

 there, that it will excite little surprise should further evidence of a 

 wholly indisputable character demonstrate the survival of the Cervus 

 megaceros within the Neolithic period, and contemporaneously with 

 man ; as in the remoter age of the Drift Folk of southern England 

 it is now believed to have been an object of the chace, and a source 

 of food, clothing, and tools. 



When once it is admitted that the great fossil deer was contem- 

 poraneous with the men of central Europe, in its Reindeer period ; 

 and has to be included among the fauna familiar to the Drift Folk 

 of southern England : this special question as to its survival 

 in Ireland within any period of the presence of man has its chief 

 value in relation to his own advent there ; for this is not a mere 

 question of geograpliical distribution, but deals with the relative 

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