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which the surface of the country may have undergone, alike 
prejudicial to their food and habits. Neither of these causes, 
however, taken separately, will satisfactorily explain why 
animals of the same genus, the same habits, living at the 
same period, and in the same country, should share a different 
fate, when the food, economy, and the power of providing 
for safety would be alike possessed by both ; as, for instance, 
— the Red Deer and Gigantic Deer, now, the mere change of 
climate alone would be destructive to both, as also to other 
animals less able to resist the vicissitudes of seasons, than their 
more powerful contemporaries. If, however, to the physical 
effects, which may have operated powerfully, we also add 
the supposition that their extirpation has been partially 
accelerated by their importance to man for food and clothing, 
their extinction like that of many other animals is more 
easily accounted for. Such, however, is not the generally 
received theory, as will be seen by the opinions I shall 
adduce, all of which attribute it to physical and climatorial 
changes alone. 
The first writer on the subject, Sir Thomas Molyneux, 
conceived that a sort of distemper or pestilential murrain might 
have cut off the Megaceri, and connecting this view with the 
remains of many of them being found in one place, he sup- 
posed, that as these animals had lived together in herds, they 
had died together in numbers. This view, he considered, 
strengthened by the fact, that a distemper in particular 
seasons carries off whole herds of the Rein-deer. In a com- 
munication I received from my friend Dr. Ball, of Dublin, who 
has carefully considered the subject, he says, my notion is, 
that the principal depots of the remains were formed thus : — 
When the lakes were still more numerous than they are now, 
and the country much colder, herds of Deer crossing the ice 
fell in, (we know such things to occur elsewhere i. e. America,) 
the bones then remained at the bottom until covered up in 
