423 
skulls to be those of females, and also denied the pos- 
sibility of the fractures in the frontal bone having been 
produced by the cause assigned, from their position in the 
first place, and secondly, from the fact that the female is 
destitute of horns. 
Mr. Newman thus concludes his observations on the subject 
in the preface to the Zoologist , — At the first cursory glance 
it may appear somewhat strange that the skulls of the males 
should invariably have been found entire. I do not, however, 
find any difficulty here ; in the first place, we may fairly 
suppose that the males, like our Bulls, were not equally 
prized for food ; in the second place, the size, as well as 
the position of the antlers, would render it next to an 
impossibility to give the desired blow with the pole-axe; 
in the third place, the greater strength and thickness of 
the skull would, almost to a certainty, render the blow 
unavailing; and in the fourth place, supposing the females 
domesticated, and the occasional tenants of sheds and other 
buildings, we may well imagine that the males were excluded 
from such buildings by the enormous size of their antlers. 
Perhaps only the males were suffered to become adult. 
Perhaps the males were allowed free range, the females 
only being permitted at stated seasons to accompany them. 
In fine, the more we investigate probabilities — the more we 
reason from present experience and knowledge — the less 
difficulty shall we find in the way of believing the Gigantic 
Deer of Ireland an animal coeval with man and subservient 
to his uses. 
Never having seen the skulls in question, I shall not 
presume to give an opinion; although it appears to me almost 
impossible for any one to confound the skulls of the male and 
female Deer, either perfect or fractured, who had seen both, 
the general form and size being so very distinct, more 
especially the enormous thickening of the frontal bone in the 
