OR, GREAT IRISH DEER. _ 217 



from Loch Gur, County Limerick.* The opinion which is now 

 generally accepted is that these abrasions and indentations are due to 

 the juxtaposition of the sharp point or edge of one bone and the 

 side of another, while subjected to a prolonged immersion in the moist 

 clay or marl. Bat to this it is further assumed mvist be superadded 

 the combined action of friction with pressure consequent on the 

 motion of the bogs in which such bones are embedded. The boggy 

 ground in which they chiefly occur is subject not only to a perpen- 

 dicular oscillation, consequent on any vibration fi'om passing weights 

 shaking the ground, or even from the wind ; but also it undergoes a 

 periodical contraction and expansion by the alternate drying and 

 saturating with moisture, in the summer and winter months ; and 

 thus indentations and cuttings, like those ordinai-ily ascribed to a 

 flint knife or saw, are of frequent occurrence on the bones of the 

 great fossil deer. To this subject Dr. A. Carte drew the attention of 

 the Royal Geological Society of Dublin, in 1866, in a paper, entitled: 

 " On some Indented Bones of the Cervus megaceros, found near 

 Lough Gur, County Limerick," and I am now enabled to exhibit 

 for your own inspection additional illustrations from the same locality 

 illustrative of this phenomenon, furnished to me by Mr. Pride, 

 Assistant-Curator of the University Museum. 



In some of those the indentations are such as few would hesitate 

 at first sight to ascribe to an artificial origin ; and so to adduce them 

 as evidence of the contemporaneous presence of man. But they occur, 

 not on separate bones, but on portions of fossil skeletons recovered 

 from the lough under circumstances which wholly preclude the idea 

 that they had been detached and carried ofi" for purposes of art ; or 

 that the indentations upon them can have been the work of human 

 hands. 



Professor Jukes was present when Dr. Carte's paper was read, and 

 referred to former statements of his opposed to the idea of the con- 

 temporaneous presence in Ii'eland of man and the Cervus megaceros. 

 " They knew," he said, " that man did exist contemporaneously with 

 that animal in England ; and then arose the geological question, was 

 Ireland at that time already separated from England and the conti- 

 nent 1 Was the great plain which formerly connected the British 



* The principal bones of a nearly complete skeleton of the Cervus megaceros, from Loch Gur, 

 were exhibited to the Canadian Institute ; and the various characteristic indentations, on what 

 must have been an undisturbed skeleton in situ, were pointed out. 



