202 



the most decayed remains does not warrant a remoter origin than the 

 JSToachic deluge, to which their miscellaneous grouping might be na- 

 turally referred. To adduce the most familiar example, the Cervus 

 megaceros must have been living in Ireland at a period long subsequent 

 to the Celtic and Iberian invasions, when the remnant of the subj ugated 

 natives,- driven into the forests and peat moors of the interior, utterly 

 perished with extinction of those animals that constituted their chief 

 means of subsistence ; for the skeletons are most commonly found im- 

 bedded in the lacustrine marl or calcareous tuff beneath the peat, and 

 often contain much organic material. A centesimal analysis of a 

 portion of one skeleton by Professor "W. Stokes yielded 43*45 phos- 

 phates, with fluates, and 42*87 animal matter; and Professor Apjohn, 

 after a careful chemical examination, states that u the cartilage and 

 gelatine had not even been perceptibly altered by time " (Hart on 

 "Fossil Deer of Ireland," p. 22-3). The Megaceros, therefore, must 

 necessarily have been a contemporary of man far on in the historic ages ; 

 although from Herodotus to Csesar, and thence to Oppian, there is no 

 specific mention of this most magnificent of the ancient giant Pachy- 

 derms ; nor even by native annalists, save a solitary and dateless tra- 

 dition of the whole species having been swept away in one season by a 

 destructive murrain. 



The present or human geological era does not display the phe- 

 nomena of new creations, but is distinctively characterized as well by 

 the gradual decay and disappearance of those species least ministering 

 to the necessities and uses of dominant man, as by the progressive melio- 

 ration and sporadic increase of all the animals specially adapted to his 

 service, comforts, and eesthetic choice ; and this law extends also to the 



that from its remote recesses occasionally issued huge beasts of strange form and fierce 

 nature. The information is acknowledged to be only from hearsay, and bears the im- 

 press of exaggeration ; but he describes at least one animal, which we can identify with 

 a surviving specimen, the Auroch — Bos urus — (Cassar, " De Bell. Gall.," 1. vi., 24, 25). 

 Now, assuming that the Hercynia Silva and similar unexplored regions stretched along 

 the banks of the Theiss (Tibiscus), and thence northward into Lithuania, we have at 

 this day an outlying remnant of those ancient Silvas affording shelter to at least one of 

 the huge brute proprietors that roamed through its shades 2000 years ago, and whose 

 descendants are now preserved by stringent forest laws in the primitive forest of Bia- 

 lowitz, in the province of Grodno, part of the ancient Lithuania.' 



In the museum at Pesth is deposited a large collection of skeleton? of the ancient 

 monster mammals — Bovine, Cervine, Elephantine, &c — in a sub-fosnl or unpetriried 

 state, collected chiefly from the alluvial basins of the Theiss and other tributaries of the 

 Danube. There are the bones of the Bos urus (still existing), and of the rein deer (now 

 delocalized by migration from a climate grown unsuitable to its habits), associated in 

 situ with the extinct Cervus megaceros, Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorinus, and 

 many others, including, as I have been informed, some which are usually referred to a 

 long anterior era ; so that we may reasonably infer the coexistence of all in the com- 

 paratively modern age of the renowned hero and historian, Julius Cassar. See also al- 

 lusion to the Hercynius Saltus in the " Gerraauia" of Tacitus, sect, xxx., and Latham's 

 " Prolegomena," p. 107. 



