SOME BITS OF HORNS FROM FOLKESTONE. 467 



by a peculiar flatness, while the tip portions of the antlers are nearly 

 or quite cylindrical. It was this feature which so much struck me in 

 the Folkestone horns, and which is a character peculiar entirely to the 

 Cervus tetracroceros and the rein-deer, C. tarandus, to which Mr. Water- 

 house inclines to think the Folkestone fragments belong. The com- 

 parison of the horns of the large collection of recent individuals 

 of the latter in the British Museum has been made, and certainly 

 in some the bach antlers present striking similarities. But the 

 horns of the rein-deer are so extraordinarily various, that in the 

 determination of mere fragments it is almost impossible to ac- 

 quire anything like certainty. Moreover, in the fragments from 

 Folkestone there is a peculiar sulcation, or deep grooving in the 

 central part, which is seen in all the horns of the Cervus tetra- 

 croceros, but which I have not noticed in any rein-deer. Geolo- 

 gists might not hesitate to determine the species from such fragments, 

 but no naturalist would. Still, we may be pretty certain that the 

 Folkestone fragments are either Cervus tetracroceros, and so examples 

 of a deer, of which the only known examples belong to a much older 

 age — the Pliocene — than is usually assigned to the other mammals 

 with which they were associated ; or they are those of the rein-deer, 

 examples of which, in a fossil state, are extremely rare in British 

 deposits. Either way they are interesting and worthy of record. 



Hundreds of fossils are thrown aside and forgotten, lost and 

 destroyed, because their finders do not know what they are. Pleased 

 am I that these bits of horns did not share such a fate, for their evi- 

 dence is valuable. Lying in the same bed with bones of the primi- 

 genial ox and ancient mammoth, red deer, hippopotamus, and Irish 

 elk, we can now add another rare species to the list, if not a new kind 

 of deer, to the number of the great beasts of that remarkable age. 

 And these bits of horn have thus proved worthy of their saving, as 

 many more bits of fossils might have done, had their owners kept them 

 till they found out what they were. 



