411 
mulate are often the very spots selected by graminivorous 
quadrupeds, particularly of the Deer kind, as watering places, 
and hence an animal during sickness, either in company with 
the herd to which it is attached, or apart from its com- 
panions, may have frequented a familiar watering spot in 
order to quench its thirst, and, sinking in the soft marly 
substance which has accumulated round the margin of the 
lake, may have in vain exerted its limbs, enfeebled by 
disease, to disengage itself, and in this situation have actually 
died. Some of its bones may have been dissipated by the 
action of the atmosphere, and some may have been borne 
away by carnivorous animals ; while the remainder may have 
owed their preservation to rains, which had washed them 
deeper in the lake, where they would be gradually enveloped 
by shell marl in the process of filling up the lake. In con- 
firmation of this idea, he cites the vicinity of Altringham, 
in Cheshire, and Wallisey Mere, where numerous remains 
of the Red Deer have been disinterred from marl deposits, and 
where the remains of several hundred skeletons of quadrupeds 
have been procured from five or six small lakes in Forfar- 
shire, where shell marl has been worked, such as the Stag, Ox, 
Boar, Horse, Sheep, Dog, Hare, Fox, Wolf, Cat, and Beaver. 
In the greater part of these lake deposits, as Sir C, Lyell 
observes, there are no signs of floods, and the expanse of 
water was originally so confined, that the smallest of the above 
quadrupeds could have crossed by swimming ; but Deer, and 
such species as take readily to the water, may often have 
been mired in trying to land where the bottom was soft and 
quaggy, and in their efforts to escape, may have plunged 
deeper into the marly bottom, while others may have fallen 
in when crossing the frozen surface in winter. 
While the different writers just noticed, suppose that no 
extraordinary inundation was the cause of their destruction, 
Archdeacon Maunsell conjectured that the Megaceri, in 
H H 
