62 Proceedings of the tloyal Irish Academy. 



found in the Castlepook Cave. Hence we may conclude that there was only 

 one race or variety of Reindeer in Ireland, that it was widely distributed and 

 abundant in the country. This view agrees with that urged by Professor 

 Leith Adams, who maintained that the antlers of the Irish Reindeer partook 

 of the characters of the Norwegian rather than the Siberian slock. 1 



The bones of the skull and the teeth of the Irish Reindeer still remain to 

 be considered. Both jaws and individual teeth of adults and very young 

 Reindeer occurred in great numbers in this cave. The teeth were quite 

 uniform in character, with the exception of a molar tooth(M.D. 2S7), which 

 had remarkably long pillars on the outer side, and thus resembled the tooth 

 of C i ither than that of Rangifer. Still, as otherwise it is of the 



1; indeer character, 1 am inclined to attribute the structure to an abnormality 

 rather than to a generic difference. 



Ae may be expected from the fact that Castlepook cave was a den of 

 1 li ; s, Bya oas, and Wolves, do complete Bkulls of Reindeer were discovered. 

 This is all the more to be i. as the most important character in the 



skull lies in its front part, and this had invariably been fractured. 1 mentioned 

 above that some authorities regarded the skull as affording more reliable 

 characters than the antlers for the purpose <>f discriminating between the 

 various varieties oi Reindeei ; and, as Professor Lilljeborg first pointed out. 

 it is the Bhape of the nasal bones that is so characteristic in the different 

 varieties, and Professors Nitsche, Camerano, and Lonnberg* concur in tins 

 view. No recognizable nasal bones of the Reindeer have been found in the 

 1 -tlepook cave. But we possess in the Dublin National Museum a 

 did perfectly j reserved skull of an adult Reindeer found in a bog 

 near Ashbourne, Mi ith. The nasal bone- in this skull resemble those of 

 the Swedish form of Reindeer, described by Professor Lonnberg, in being fiat 

 above. Although no nasal hones are present in any of the skull fragments 

 from the Castlepook cave, the anterior margin of the frontal hone, as seen in 

 a specimen marked M.D. L'.'U. indicates that the lachrymal vacuity was quite 

 as large as in the Ashbourne skull, and extended far hack between the 

 1 ichrymal and frontal bones. The lachrymal vacuity thus resembled that in 

 the Greenland skulls, while it Lb very much smaller in the Swedish Reindeer 

 rg, 6g. 1 . The Reindeer skulls which I received from Skansen, 

 in Stockholm, and which belonged to domesticated specimens, also agree in 



'Adams, A. Leith . "On the recent and extinct Irish Mammals." Scieut. ProO. 

 R. Dublin Boc. (N.8.), vol. ii. pj>- 45-86. 1880. 



- Lilljeborg, W. : " Sverigea og Norges Ryggradajur." 



■Lonnberg, Kinar : "Taxonomii bout Palcarctic Reindeer." Arkiv for 



Zoologie, vol. vi. V i 1909. 



