W. Williams — The Megaceros in Ireland. 361 



figure CO ; when we sink in the northern bog or lake, we do not find 

 this bed of clay, but we find its equivalent, a bed of gravel, out of 

 which the flow of water washed and carried forward the finer 

 particles and deposited them in the southern lake from year to 

 year over the sediment or brown clay (No. 3), and thus formed the 

 bed No. 4, which is about from 30 inches to 3 feet deep, containing 

 hundreds of tons of nearly 'pure argillaceous mineral matter, such 

 as might be used by the potter. I have said that it indicates 

 a marked change in climate, from mild and genial to one of 

 almost arctic character, when the British Islands in their elevated 

 portions were perhaps covered with perpetual snow, when the 

 Musk-ox, Keindeer, and other Arctic animals ranged down to the 

 south of France, and when our coasts were probably occupied 

 by the Esquimaux or a similar race. It is just such a clay as 

 might be produced by the milky or muddy water that flows from 

 beneath a glacier; but, lest it should be said that I am assuming 

 what is not proved, it may be as well to assign some reasons for 

 my views. 



I infer it is a glacial clay, because of its nature and texture. It is 

 purely mineral, or nearly so, and must have been produced from the 

 granitic hills on either side of the valley by the disintegrating action 

 of frost and ice. 



I infer it is glacial from its quantity. The bed is nearly three feet 

 thick, spread over about three acres. Why did not this mineral matter 

 come down in like quantity all the time of the deposit of the clay 

 bed No. 3 which underlies it ? Simply because during the genial 

 conditions which then existed the hills were everywhere thickly 

 covered with vegetation ; when the rain fell, it soaked into the 

 soil, and the clay, being bound together by the roots of the grasses, 

 was not washed down; just as at the present time, when there is 

 hardly any degradation of these hills taking place. 



Lastly, I infer ice-action from having in my possession antlers of 

 the Megaceros actually scored like a striated boulder. The underside 

 of the antler was firmly embedded in the marl, and has no marks ; 

 the upper side was exposed to the grinding action of ice, with coarse 

 sand frozen to its under surface, this miniature glacier must have 

 passed over the antler, and made the scorings in question. 



In this glacial bed I found the antler of a Eeindeer ; what but 

 arctic conditions would have brought this animal so far south? 



Nor can I account for the broken state of the Megaceros remains, 

 unless from pressure of great masses of ice on the surface of the 

 clays in which they were imbedded, the wide expanse of the palms 

 of the antlers exposing them to pressure and liability to breakage, 

 and even in many instances when there was twelve or fourteen inches 

 in circumference of solid bone almost as hard and sound as ivory it 

 was snapped across. I have been told that a rush of water tumbling 

 the heads over each other, would do this, but it has been stated that 

 the elevation of the valley precluded the possibility of its receiving 

 a river of such force as to produce such effects; moreover the state 

 of the teeth shows the incorrectness of this idea. In every instance 



