Vlll PREFACE. 



pear to have been the rejectamenta of some slaughter-house : they 

 consist principally of the skulls of cattle {Bos), of two or three 

 species, — red deer, giant deer (Cervus megaceros), goats, and pigs 

 of more than one species : and there also occur, but not in 

 abundance, bones of the rein-deer. The skulls of the cattle, 

 and some of the pigs, have large ragged fractures in the frontal 

 bone, exactly similar to those which appear in the skulls of bullocks 

 slaughtered at the present day with the pole-axe; and there seems 

 no reasonable ground for doubting that the animals to which 

 these skulls belonged also met their death from the hands of man, 

 and by means of a very similar instrument. But the most remark- 

 able circumstance is this — that among the skulls so fractured are two 

 most unmistakeable specimens of female giant deer : to these my 

 attention was particularly invited, and T have not the least hesita- 

 tion in expressing my firm conviction that the fractures were the 

 result of human hands, and were the cause of the death of the 

 animals. These two fractured skulls correspond too exactly with 

 each other, and with that of a bullock with which I compared 

 them to have resulted from accident : the edges of the fractures 

 wore an appearance of being coeval with the interment or sub- 

 mergence of the skulls, and presented a very strikingly different 

 appearance from a fracture recently made, and which I had the 

 opportunity of examining. There were several skulls of the male of 

 the same species, one bearing enormous antlers, but none exhibit- 

 ing the slightest trace of frontal fracture. 



It is well known to palaeontologists that remains of the giant 

 deer have been discovered in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Norfolk, Essex, 

 and I believe other English counties, and still more recently I hear 

 of its having been discovered on the continent : there was also an 

 accredited legend, that a skeleton now in the museum of the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh, was found in the Isle of Man ; but it is now 

 stated that a person named Crampton bought this in Dublin, 

 carried it to the Isle of Man and sold it to the Duke of Athol, 

 who presented it to the University. I am quite willing to leave 

 this question in the hands of the disputants without expressing 



