1590 Quadrupeds. 



people have carted them to Limerick for shipment to Liverpool and 

 London to be ground for manure. 



But before proceeding with my account, it may be as well to give 

 a description of the locality in which this extraordinary deposit of 

 bones was found. About ten miles from Limerick, and two from 

 Bruff, on the mail-coach road to Cork, is a small lake called Lough 

 Giir, a long, narrow, winding sheet of water, and having in the middle 

 an island, which, in my opinion, must have been used as a cooking- 

 kitchen or slaughtering place for an army, for the skulls and bones of 

 the animals above-mentioned were found in the water all round the 

 island, so that one would think the cattle of an entire nation must have 

 been slaughtered to produce so vast an assemblage : and I should 

 add in this place, that the Count de Salis, the lord of the soil, informs 

 me that he has in his possession many swords, spear-heads, and a 

 brass dish also found on the island. 



The lake is surrounded by castellated mountain limestone of 

 a whitish colour, which being bare of vegetation, has, at a distance, 

 something the appearance of a ruined city, and must have been origin- 

 ally very difficult of access. Some time ago Count de Salis sunk a 

 canal in connection with the lake ; this had the effect of lowering the 

 water many feet, and of greatly reducing the size of the lake, both in 

 length and breadth : it was thus that the bones around the island 

 were rendered visible to the Count's tenants, who carted them in vast 

 quantities to Limerick, as I have already mentioned, and at the pre- 

 sent time none can be obtained without dredging. By this lowering 

 of the water of the lake, a fine hard black turf was exposed, and this 

 has afforded excellent fuel to the tenantry in the neighbourhood. 



I will now endeavour to describe the skulls of the different animals, 

 as well as I am able in the absence of collections in our public insti- 

 tutions to which I can refer : and wall begin with those of the giant 

 deer, which have stamped on their frontal bones the obvious evidence 

 of man's destructive hands. These heads agree in every particular 

 with those of the male except in the want of horns, the puffed out 

 lower portion of the face and the base of the skull near the occiput : 

 every inequality on the skull caused by the presence of veins or arte- 

 ries, or by the attachment of muscles is precisely the same in male 

 and female. The second species is a much smaller deer, and the skull 

 differs from that of the giant deer, in being more elongate and nar- 

 rower, and in wanting the puffed appearance of the face : the base of 

 the skull and occiput also differ. The third species is the red deer, 



