The Deer tribe was represented in our islands from the glacial period up to recent times by the gigantic animal known as the Irish Elk, which, with the Moose or Elk, and Reindeer, disappeared from this country before the historical epoch, whilst their contemporaries, the Red Deer and Roe, have, through careful protection, survived them.
The Great-horned, or Gigantic Deer, was unquestionably one of the most magnificent quadrupeds that ever trod the face of our planet. A full-grown stag, standing erect, measured from ten feet to twelve feet from the ground to the summit of the antlers, the spread of which covered over ten feet; with such a span, it has often been a matter of wonder how the animal could proceed through the forest, unless, as the Red Deer often does, it constantly dipped the antlers, which in case of pursuit would greatly impede its progress. Hence the supposition is that it fed more in the open, along the bare hill-sides and by the margins of lakes. The first entire skeleton was discovered in the Isle of Man about 1825; subsequently larger and more perfect skeletons were found in Ireland, and, almost without exception, in the shell marl and clay underlying the bogs. We believe we are correct in stating that no remains of the Great-horned Deer have yet been found in the peat, which shows that the animal must have died out before the moss and other water plants commenced to form on the lakes. Notwithstanding the discovery of several thousand heads and bones of this Deer, they afford no indication that man was contemporary with it, and old Irish literature has been ransacked in vain for evidence on this point.
It was, however, contemporary with the Reindeer in England and Ireland, where remains of the two have been found associated, whether through chance or choice; and there is no doubt that the animal was at one time extremely common in the sister isle—so plentiful, indeed, that there are few peat bogs which have not produced exuviæ.
During the summer of 1875 no less than thirty skeletons huddled together were exhumed from underlying clay in the bog of Killegar, among the Dublin mountains, whilst in the same situation (both instances occurring in an area of not a hundred yards by twenty) in 1847 as many as thirty more heads of this Stag were found. However the deer perished—whether by getting mired when
