OR, GREAT IRISH DEER. 219 



such circumstances to be, not that the megaceros had been hunted and 

 killed by the crannoge builders, but that they had found the gigantic 

 deer's head, " and put it up for an ornament or trophy, as is done 

 at the present day."* 



So far, at least, it thus appears, — notwithstanding the indisputable 

 proofs of the employment of the bones and horns of the Cervus 

 megaceros by primitive manufacturers of the Neolithic age ; and the 

 survival of this gigantic deer throughout the Paloeolithic age of human 

 art : — that evidence is still wanting to satisfy the scientific en- 

 quirer as to the co -existence of man and the great fossil deer in Ire- 

 land, where, more than in any other locality, this might be expected 

 to occur. The primitive lyre found in the moat of Desmood Castle 

 was undoubtedly fashioned from the bones of the extinct deer ; but 

 the material may have been recovered, as in modern times, from the 

 marie of some neighbouring bog, and turned to account like the bog- oak 

 so abundantly used in modern art ; rather than have been wrought 

 by the Neolithic craftsman from the spoils of the chase. 



In 1859, Sir W. R. Wilde read a lengthened communication at 

 two successive meetings of the Royal Irish Academy, " Upon the 

 unmanufactured animal remains belonging to the Academy." In 

 arranging its collection of Irish Antiquities his attention was drawn 

 to numerous crania and bones, chiefly of carnivora and .ruminants, 

 from river beds, bogs and crannoges ; including sixteen crania, and 

 upwards of seventy detached fragments of skeletons of the Cervus 

 megaceros. The circumstances under which they were recovered 

 have not been in all cases preserved, and no distinct evidence tends 

 to confirm the idea of their contemporaneity with man. In remark- 

 ing on the then novel recognition of the remains of Irish fossil deer 

 in the tool-bearing gravel drifts of Abbeville, Sir W. R. Wilde 

 observes : " As yet we have not discovered any Irish name for it. 

 If the animal was here a contemporary of man, it certainly had 

 become extinct long befoi-e the Irish had a knowledge of letters." f 

 It is, however, altogether consistent with the evidence of a succession 

 of races in the British Isles, and throughout Europe, to find that 

 this era of the long extinct fossil mammalia pertaining to the Palaeo- 

 lithic, or even to the Neolithic age of primitive art, has no record in 

 the oldest of the living languages. The same is true of others of 



* Dublin Quarterly Journal of Science, iv., 125. f Proceedings of R. I. A. vii , 195. 



