British Deer and their Horns 
CHAPTER I 
EXTINCT BRITISH DEER 
Even in these education-made-easy days Palaeontology is hardly a word to conjure with. 
It is too much of a mouthful for most people, and in point of sound it has not even the 
charm that a pious old lady is said to have found in “ that blessed word Mesopotamia.” 
Then as to the science itself, some of us may perhaps think we had enough of it in early 
youth when periodically dragged by a tutor through the dingy recesses of the old British 
Museum in Russell Street, and then and there crammed with more learning than we could 
digest about the marvellous creatures of the Pliocene and Pleistocene ages. Be that as it may, 
I must touch upon the subject in these pages, though only—as I hasten to assure the timid 
reader—in the most cursory and perfunctory fashion. Indeed it would be an impertinence 
on my part to attempt anything more than this, since the whole subject has been exhaustively 
dealt with by some of our more eminent scientists, notably Professor Owen and Professor 
Boyd Dawkins. 
And now I must mention the various species of deer which have been named from the 
fossil remains of their bones and horns, and denoting at the same time the localities in which 
they were discovered. They are, Pliocene : (i) extinct British elk (AIces latifrons)^ loc. Nor¬ 
folk and Suffolk forest beds; (2) Dawkins’s deer ( Cervus Dawkinsi ), loc. Norfolk and Suffolk 
forest beds ; (3) Savin’s deer ( Cervus Savini ), loc. Norfolk forest bed; (4) Cervus verticornis , 
loc. forest bed, Lowestoft ; (5) Cervus polignacus , loc. forest bed, Mundesly, Norfolk ; (6) 
Sedgwick’s deer ( Cervus Sedgwickii ), loc. forest bed, Bacton, Norfolk; (7) Buckland’s fossil 
deer ( Cervus Bucklandi ), loc. Kirkdale; (8) Brown’s deer ( Cervus Browni), loc. Clacton, 
Essex; and Pleistocene : (9) gigantic round-antlered deer ( Strongyloceros spelaeus) and red deer 
(Cervus elaphus ), loc. England, Scotland, and Ireland ; (10) gigantic Irish deer ( Megaceros 
hibernicus ), loc. England, Scotland, and Ireland; (11) reindeer ( Tarandus rangifer ), loc. 
England, Scotland, and Ireland ; and roe ( Capreolus caprea). 
Some idea of the forms which the horns of these deer presented may be gathered from 
the accompanying illustrations and measurements, to which only a few words need be added. 
Extinct British Elk (.Alces latifrons'). —This deer, which closely resembles the elk still 
found in Europe, is said by Professor Boyd Dawkins to have inhabited Norfolk and the great 
valley between that county and Norway which was eventually covered by the glacial sea. 
B 
