378 [Proc. B. N. F. C, 



before the audience seemed to be satisfied with their examina- 

 tion of the apparently inexhaustible stock of the specimens in 

 the room. 



The twenty-second Annual Meeting of the Society was held 

 in the Museum, on Tuesday, 29th April — Mr. Wm. Gray, 

 M.R.I.A., in the chair. The formal business of the evening, as 

 announced by programme, was to hear the reports of the Secre- 

 taries and Treasurer for the past year ; but, as on several 

 similar occasions, a short communication of scientific interest 

 that had come under recent notice was brought forward by a 

 member. This evening it was a note by Rev. H. W. Lett, 

 M.A., T.C.D., on a remarkable and interesting discovery of 

 antlers of red deer found during excavations at Mr. Waddell's 

 lime quarries near Maralin. The workmen were stripping 

 some of the chalk rock, and while removing the overlying clay 

 they came upon a deep and extensive bed or layer of broken 

 and gravelly chalk, in which, at a depth of six or seven feet 

 from the surface, were found half a cart-load of deer's horns. 

 They were lying confusedly, and not far from each other. It 

 was observed that none were discovered in the fine boulder 

 clay. The horns are greatly decayed, and when taken out were 

 quite soft and fragile ; some of the tines were perfect, and 

 measured ten inches in length ; most of them were of full- 

 grown animals, while a few were of a smaller size. Fully a 

 third of them had a portion of the skull ajttached, indicating 

 that they had not been shed in the ordinary way, but that their 

 owners had been killed by primeval man for food, or by some 

 other animals, close upon, if not previous to, the great ice-age. 



The labourers noticed that no teeth or other bones were 

 found. The escarpment shows that the deposit which contains 

 these sub-fossil remains is stratified, indicating its having been 

 laid down by water, and that it is undisturbed ; while the 

 position is far from any stream, or where there could have been 

 a river or lake, being on the side of a hill more than a hundred 

 feet above the bed of the Lagan. The exact spot is close to, and 



