A Recent Find of Irish Elk Bones in Belfast 77 



January of this year. Under the footpath on the east side of 

 High Street and Castle Place a quantity of human bones were 

 dug up, opposite St. George's Church, where the burying ground 

 of the previous Church of St. Patrick extended, but it was 

 not until the workmen reached Castle Place that anything 

 of special interest was found. On January i8th an intelligent 

 working man brought him three jaw bones, which had been 

 taken from a depth of seven feet under the footpath, at Mr. 

 Watson's shop, No. 10 Castle Place. Prof. R. O. Cunningham, 

 M.D., kindly examined these bones, and pronounced them to 

 be those of an Irish elk, horse, and sheep. Opposite Messrs. 

 Hart and Churchill's shop quite a number of jaws of the 

 Irish elk were turned up, with some fragments of leg and rib 

 bones. These were associated with branches of trees, probably 

 willow, and were six feet ten inches under the surface of the 

 flags of the footpath. Mr. S. F. Milligan, M.R.I.A., secured 

 some bones, apparently of the horse and dog, which he has 

 kindly presented to the Museum. The Museum's specimen of 

 the Irish elk surpassed in size the largest living deer. Its 

 antlers were sometimes eleven feet from tip to tip, while those 

 of the moose were only four feet. The most recent discovery of 

 Irish elk bones seemed to be that described Mr. R. L. Prseger, 

 B.A., M.R.I.A., on February i6th, 1892. They consisted of a 

 skull found in the preceeding December in excavating near the 

 Spencer Basin. It was in the centre of a peat bed, three feet 

 thick, with a depth of thirty feet of estuarine clay above. On 

 the same bed of peat at the Alexandra Dock bones of the deer 

 and wild boar occurred. The present find of Irish elk bones 

 seemed to be ihe first to be noted within the city boundaries. 

 These bones were lying almost on the surface of the estuarine 

 clay or sleech, and the Irish elk, horse, and sheep bones were 

 found close together, as if either swept down by some flood or 

 possibly deposited in such by human agency. This latter 

 supposition was strengthened by the remarkable appearance of 

 some of the larger bones, which apparently had been broken into 

 short lengths to extract the marrow. They resembled in this 



