222 AN ANCIENT HAUNT OF THE CEBVUS MEGACEROS ; 



malia of prehistoric Ireland. Its range, alike in place and in time, 

 appears to have been more circumscribed than that of most, if not 

 all of the animals with which it is found associated in post-pliocene 

 deposits. Traces of it, indeed, have not only been noted to the south 

 of the Alps, but Professor Brandt has identified its remains among 

 the cave disclosures of the Altai Mountains. But on both continents 

 it had a similar temperate range ; and no remains of it have been dis' 

 covered in the extreme north of Europe. To this the nature of its 

 food may have contributed ; while the mammoth and the reindeer 

 were able to subsist within the Arctic circle, as well as in temperate 

 ranges common to them and to the gigantic elk. But circumscribed 

 though the range of the latter appeal's to have been, its enormous 

 dimensions, conjoined with seemingly gregarious habits, were incom- 

 patible with limits so greatly restricted as the Isle of Man, if not 

 indeed with those of Ireland ; and hence the probability of the 

 assumption that its extinction preceded, or speedily followed the 

 period when the British Islands became detached from the Continent 

 of Europe. 



The Cervus megaceros attained a height of neai'ly eleven feet, and 

 bore an enormous pair of antlers, measuring at times nearly fourteen 

 feet from tip to tip. The head, with its ponderous pair of antlers, 

 is estimated to have exceeded 100 lbs. in weight when living. To 

 this the frequent miring of the deer in the lakes and bogs, where 

 their remains abound, has been ascribed ; nor is it improbable that 

 the ultimate extinction of the species may have been due to the 

 abnormal development of such head-gear, while its large antlered con- 

 temporary, the Reindeer, still survives. 



Mr. R. J. Moss was led from his former careful observations to 

 conclude that Ballybetagh Bog occupies the site of an ancient lake 

 or tarn which stretched along the bottom of the glen. The west 

 side of the glen is flanked by the southern side of a hill, and another 

 of less elevation hems it in on the east. . The embouchure of the 

 lake appears to have been at the southern end ; and whether 

 we assume that the deer when swimming across the lake got entangled 

 in the stiff clay at the bottom, and so were drowned ; or that they 

 resorted to the lake to die, it would seem that their bodies drifted 

 with the current to the outlet of the lake, and hence the enormous 

 accumulation of their remains in one place. In describing one of 

 the trenches opened by him, Mr. Moss says ; " At the noi-th end 



