186 
[No. 2, 
Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 
the bleak moors of Devonshire, and in Ireland, where the species 
would appear to he fast verging on extirpation.* It attains a finer 
growth in Richmond Park, Surrey ; though still not comparable, in 
the magnificent development of horn, to the specimens occasionally 
met with in the peat-bogs of the British Islands and other post- 
pliocene deposits of the west of Europe, or to the noble Stags which 
still exist in the great forests of Hungary and Transsylvania. Vide 
dimensions of the horns of a modern Stag, shot on the Buckowina in 
1815, in J. A. S. X, 749,— and figure of a Hungarian horn, p. 750, 
pi. f. 11 ; also figure of the noble pair of horns of an ancient 
Irish Stag in the Natural History Beview for January, 1860, p. 61. 
At a meeting of the Geological Society of Dublin, (November 8th, 
1843, as cited by the late W. Thompson of Belfast,) “ a magnificent 
series of the horns of the Red Deer, from Balinderry Lake, County 
Westmeath,” were exhibited, among which was “ one pair of gigantic 
proportions, having nineteen tines, possessed also of the unusual 
quality of being, in huntsman’s parlance, 4 doubly royal,’ or giving 
indication of a double palmation near their terminations ; an occur- 
rence of a rare kind, and the result of very advanced age in the 
animal.”f (The latter is a mistake.) Vide also Owen’s figure in his 
British Fossil Mammals and Birds. Many years ago, Professor 
Schinz of Zurich remarked to me, in the course of his correspondence, 
that the fossil specimens of C. elapses found in Switzerland are 
generally about one-fourth larger, in all their dimensions, than the 
common existing race of the same region. 
It has occurred to me that the great Hungarian Stag might prove 
to be no other than the Asiatic race, which is known to extend to 
the eastern shore of the Euxine, from which region a pair are now 
* Vide Thompson’s ‘Natural History of Ireland,’ IV, 81. 
f Doubtless the identical specimen figured in the Natural History Review 
which numbers nineteen tines. The Red Deer of Norway are considerably small- 
er than those of the Scottish Highlands. Thus, Mr. L. Lloyd remarks, that on 
the island of “ Hittern, which is situated within less than one hundred miles of 
Drontheim, the ancient capital of Norway, there are a good many Red Deer 
still remaining — several hundreds it is said — and more than one of my friends,” 
he adds, “ have enjoyed tolerable sport with the rifle : * * * but every one 
agrees in stating that the Deer found on the island are remarkably small— one- 
third less, at the least, than those in the Highlands of Scotland. These again are 
inferior to the German Deer, so thut it would seem that either a deficiency 
of proper food, or the severity of the climate, has caused the breed greatly to 
degenerate.” Scandinavian Adventures (1854), II, 219. 
