6 PLEISTOCENE MAMMALIA. 



§ 4. Relation to Alces machlis, and Mange in Space and Time. — In the foregoing 

 remarks it has been proved that the Alces latifrons is specifically distinct from Alces 

 machlis in its greater breadth of forehead and in the longer beams of the antlers. It 

 must further be noted that no remains of Alces machlis have been found in the strata of 

 the same geological age as the Forest- bed series, its earliest appearance in Britain being 

 in the peat bogs and alluvia of Prehistoric age. 1 Nor am I aware of the discovery of its 

 remains in any Pleistocene deposit on the Continent. 



The antler engraved on a slab of mica schist by the Cave Men and found in the Late 

 Pleistocene cave of Les Eyzies, and a lower jaw in the Oxford Museum from Llandebie 

 Cave, near Swansea, are referred by Prof. Edouard Lartet to the Elk. 2 The former, how- 

 ever, belongs to the Reindeer, 3 and the latter to the Cervus mej/aceros. 



The Alces latifrons has up to the present time only been found in one or other of 

 the Early Pleistocene 4 deposits of Norfolk and Suffolk, and is unrepresented in any of 

 the collections which I have examined on the Continent. It is, therefore, earlier in time 

 than the Alces machlis according to the present evidence. It may with great probability 

 be taken to be an ancestral form, in which the palmated extremity of the antler did not 

 encroach on the beam to the same extent as in the living Elk. This conclusion is 

 strengthened by the consideration of the changes in antler-development in the living Elk 

 in its passage from youth to old age. In the young antler the palmated crown is confined 

 to the end of the antler, while the palmation with advancing years encroaches more and 

 more on the beam, and ultimately occupies the whole antler above tine c. 5 



The Alces latifrons and the A. machlis are the only representatives hitherto known of 

 the aberrant cervine genus Alces. 



1 For the range of the Elk in the Prehistoric strata of Britain, see Dr. A. Smith, ' Proceed. Soc. Antiq., 

 Scotland, ix. 



2 ' Revue Archeologique,' 1864, " Cavernes du Perigord," p. 24, separate copy. 



3 Lartet and Christy, 'Reliquiae Aquitanicse,' 4to. a, pi. xxix, fig. 5, p. 127. 



4 I cannot accept the view of Mr. Clement Reid (' Memoirs of the Geological Survey,' " The Geology 

 of the Country around Cromer," 8vo, 1882) that these beds belong to the Pleiocene, because it is negatived 

 by the presence of at least twenty-one living species of the higher Mammalia, including such forms as the 

 Spotted Hysena {H. croeuta), the Glutton, the Musk Sheep, the Horse, the Roe, and the Red Deer, and of 

 such characteristic Pleistocene species as the Cave Bear and the Mammoth. To this list Mr. Savin has 

 recently added the Otter by his discovery of a jaw in the Weybourn Beds at East Runton. The presence 

 of these animals proves that the Forest-bed series belongs to the Pleistocene, or that period when the 

 living higher Mammalia were abundant, and not to the Pleiocene, in which there were only some three or 

 four of the higher Mammalia present in Europe. The whole group of Mammalia in the Forest-bed series 

 is distinctly of Pleistocene fades. See 'Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Lond.,' xxxix, p. 5/9 ; see also Lyell, 

 ' Antiquity of Man,' chap, xii ; and Dawkins, ' Early Man in Britain,' chap. vi. 



5 Blasius, ' Fauna der Wirbelthiere Deutschlands,' I, Siiugethiere, 8vo, p. 437. 



