THE GIANT DEER, 13 



The first of these causes was advocated by Molyneux (1697). He rejects the theory 

 of the Noachian flood, suggesting that extinction may be due to " certain ill-consti- 

 tution of air in some of the past seasons long since the Flood, which may have 

 occasioned an epidemic distemper." He quotes examples of such distempers affecting 

 Reindeer in Lapland. Any which survived the epidemic, he suggests, were killed by 

 human hunters. Eichwald (1845) favoured the view that it was exterminated by Man. 



The third of these suggested causes was maintained by Williams, who considered 

 that the deposit of clay overlying that containing the Megaceros remains is of glacial 

 origin, and hence that cold was the cause of the animal's extinction. In this conclusion 

 he is supported by much modern opinion. 



From the analogy of many groups of animals in which over-specialization either in 

 size or in some other respect is closely followed by extinction, it seems probable that 

 here is to be found the most important cause of the extinction of the Irish Giant Deer. 



h. Distribution of the Giant Deer in Time. 



Although, as has already been mentioned, Pohlig derives the Giant Deer from 

 Cervus dicranius of the Upper Tertiary, no discovery has as yet definitely carried 

 back the race to an earlier date than the Upper Pliocene. Both in England and on 

 the continent, especially in Italy, remains of this date are well known. In England 

 ancestral Fallow Deer like Cervus verticornis are found in the Red Crag and Forest 

 Bed of East Anglia, and forms like C. belgrandi, intermediate between early Fallow 

 Deer and Giant Deer, occur in the Forest Bed. In Italy ancestral Fallow Deer are 

 found in the valley of the Po. Numerous records of Giant Deer (Cervus (Euryceros) 

 germanice) from Northern and Western Germany show that these animals had a wide 

 distribution in that part of Europe prior to the last great increase of cold in Magda- 

 lenian times. There does not, however, appear to be any clear evidence that the 

 Giant Deer survived in northern continental Europe into post-Magdalenian times. 



Numerous records show that the Giant Deer was widely distributed in England 

 during Palaeolithic times and spread thence to the south-west of Scotland and the Isle 

 of Man, whence it probably reached Ireland. Though recorded from the peat in 

 several localities 1 there is little evidence of its survival in Great Britain as late as 

 Neolithic times. It is, nevertheless, commonly quoted as the sole extinct member of 

 the Palaeolithic fauna which survived, attaining its maximum in the Irish deposits 

 of the period, and persisting, so it has been claimed, even to Prehistoric times. 



Whether it survived the latest period of refrigeration is not so clear as was once 

 thought to be the case. To take first the Megaceros-be&img deposits of the Isle of 



1 Owen (' Brit. Foss. Mamm.,' p. 466) records it from the peat of Hilgay, Norfolk ; Seeley (' Quart. 

 Journ. Geol. Soc.,' x.xii, 1864, p. 479, and ' Geol. Mag.,' 1866, p. 499) alludes to its presence in the 

 peat of the Fen country ; N. Moore (' Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.,' xx, 1867, p. 77) to its presence in the 

 Fens. 



