Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/109

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GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE FALLOW DEER.
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Deer in the caves and bogs, as well as in the diluvial fresh-water chalk of Wurtemburg. lie further states that in the Museum of Mannheim there are skulls not only of Bos primigenius, but also of B. priscus and its ally B. priscus affinis, with a skull of Cervus dama giganteus, all found in the diluvium in the neighbourhood of Mannheim.

In the Museum at Linz, in Upper Austria, numerous remains of animals from the diluvium in the neighbourhood of Wels are preserved, which were discovered at no great distance in cutting the railway known as the Elizabeth-Westbahn in Buchberg. Besides a fractured piece of the horn of a Red Deer, a molar of Ursus arctos (not U. spelæus), a fine molar of the Mammoth (Elephas primigenius) and horses' teeth, there is in the Museum—amongst those remains marked as found in the above-mentioned railway cutting—a fine large fragment of horn undoubtedly belonging to a Fallow Deer. Like the fragment of horn of Cervus elaphus from the same locality, it is of a white colour and has a calcined appearance. In 1870 and again in 1873 I examined this interesting fragment of horn, with the other animal remains found at the same time, and am indebted to the kindness of Herr Kaiserl Ehrlich, the Curator of the Museum, for a photograph of it. In October, 1873, I also inspected the cutting at Buchberg, and convinced myself of the purely diluvial nature of the soil there. In many places I found it deeply excavated for gravel (schotter), and it seems clear that the horns and teeth preserved in the Museum at Linz were found in one of these gravel-pits, but lying in a stratum of marl (mergeligen) beneath the gravel.

Fragments of horn undoubtedly belonging to the Fallow Deer were dug out by Dr. F.A. Wagner in the autumn of 1828, in the ash-heap (aschenschicht) of a so-called place of sacrifice (opfer-herdes) between Schlieben and the village of Malitzschkendorf, in Schweinitz, Saxony, in large quantities, together with remains of the Elk (among them a four-tined elk-horn), the teeth of mighty boars, and remains of very large oxen, roe-deer, and sheep, as well as wheat and millet. A detailed account of these discoveries is given in his work.[1] Dr. Wagner (a physician at Schlieben) prosecuted his researches with the greatest conscientiousness and determined the animal remains in question with great care and

  1. 'Ægypten in Deutschland oder die germanisch-slavischen wo nicht rein germanischen Alterthümer an der schwarzen Elster.' Leipzig, Hartmann, 1833.