12 
The Ancient Fauna or Essex. 
Gigantic Beaver, the Gigantic Irish Deer (fig. 5), Sedgwick’s 
Deer, the Bed Deer (still living), the Horse, and the Fox. 
It would he interesting if we could by any possibility picture 
to ourselves the conditions of life, and the conditions of 
Fig. 5.—Skeleton of Gigantic Irish Deer Cervus (Megaceros) hibernicus, 
Owen. Met with in the shell-marls and clays beneath the peat-bogs in 
Ireland. [Reproduced, by the courtesy of Messrs. A. and C. Black, from 
Prof. Owen's ‘Paleontology,’ p. 405.] 
climate in Britain under which animals of such varied charac¬ 
ters lived, the remains of which are met with in a single series 
of deposits such as the Thames Valley affords ! We cannot 
avoid the conclusion that a very great change must have 
