2 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



studied in the course of my work the remains in the principal collections at home and on 

 the Continent. 1 



The following Monograph is founded principally on specimens recently collected by 

 Mr. James Backhouse, of York, Mr. Savin, of Cromer, Mr. J. J. Colman, M.P., of Norwich, 

 Mr. W. M. Crowfoot, of Beccles, and Mr. E. T. Dowson, of Geldestone, as well as on 

 specimens in the Museums of Norwich (Gunn Collection), York, of the Geological Survey, 

 and in the British Museum. 2 



In most of the principal collections from the Forest Bed of Norfolk are certain skulls 

 hitherto unnamed, remarkable for their great frontal width, and variously-named antlers 

 characterised by the absence of tines on the beam, by the bovine-like sweep of the beam 

 from the frontals, and in the larger and more perfect specimens by the flattening which 

 implies the existence of a palmated crown. Eor one of the less perfect specimens Mr. 

 Gunn has proposed the name of Cervus 5ovides, s and two of the palmated antlers have 

 been described by Mr. Randall Johnson under the name of Cervus latifrons. The whole 

 of these remains I am now able to unite under one species, Alces latifrons, and to bring 

 it into close relation with the aberrant cervine form, the Elk {Alces mac/ilis), now inhabit- 

 ing the north-temperate and arctic regions of the Old and New Worlds. 



§ 2. Description and Identification of the Skull. — The materials for the definition of 

 the skull of Alces latifrons consist of two hinder parts of the skull respectively in Mr. 

 Savin's collection and in the British Museum, a frontlet in the Norwich Museum, and 

 portions of nine frontal bones attached to antlers in the above-mentioned collections, and 

 in those of Mr. Randall Johnson and Mr. Backhouse. In Mr. Savin's specimen from 

 the Weybourn beds, East Run ton (PL I, fig. 1), in which the left antler is attached to 

 the skull, the principal characters are these. The occipital crest is strongly marked and 

 stands well back from the occipito-parietal suture. The frontals are very tumid between 

 the antlers, and, together with the antler- pedicles, p e, present a peculiar broad forehead 

 (Tables I, II, and III), from which the antler springs at right angles in the same plane 

 as the frontals, instead of at an angle with the frontal plane, 4 as is the case with all other 

 Deer with the exception of Alces (PL I, fig. 7). 



These characters are repeated in the second skull in the British Museum, which was 

 dredged on the Dogger Bank, and which, evidently from its highly mineralised condition 

 and the adherent fragments of red ferruginous matrix, has been derived from the Forest 

 Bed. They are also repeated in a frontlet in Mr. Gunn's collection (PL I, fig. 2), now in 

 the Norwich Museum, and referred by him to Cervus bovides. It is a singularly massive 

 bone, and presents a thickness of 1*25 inch in the line of the interfrontal suture. This 



1 See various papers in the 'Quarterly Journal of the Geol. Soc., London,' vols, xxiv, xxvii, xxxiv. 



2 I take this opportunity of thanking these gentlemen, and the curators of the various Museums, for 

 the facilities which I have enjoyed of studying the specimens. 



3 ' Memoirs of the Geological Survey of England and Wales,' E. T. Newton " On the Vertebrata of the 

 Forest Bed Series," 1882, p. 52. 



4 The frontal plane is measured in the frontal region between the antlers. 



