The Zoologist/3rd series, vol 1 (1877)/Issue 3/On the Northern Range of the Fallow Deer in Europe

by William Boyd Dawkins

 

ON THE NORTHERN RANGE OF THE FALLOW DEER
IN EUROPE.

By W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., F.R.S.^[1]

 

In the interesting essay by Dr. Jeitteles^[2] many cases of the reputed discovery of the remains of the Fallow Deer are collected together to prove that the animal is indigenous in Northern Europe, and not imported from the south, as heretofore has been supposed by many able naturalists, such as Blasius, Steenstrup, Rütimeyer, the late Prof. Ed. Lartet, and others. These cases are accepted by Dr. Sclater without criticism, and are deemed by him to place the importation theory, as it may be termed, in the category of "ancient fables." The question, however, seems to me, after many years' study of the fossil and recent Cervidæ of this country and of France, a very difficult one, not to be decided off-hand, and certainly not without a strict analysis of the value of evidence such as that recorded by Dr. Jeitteles, whose method and facts appear to be equally in error.

The identification of fragments of antlers is one of the most difficult tasks which a naturalist can take in hand, and where there are several species of deer associated together in the same deposit, it is sometimes impossible to assign a given fragment to its rightful owner. For example, in the forest beds of Norfolk and Suffolk, and in the Pleiocenes of the Continent, there is a vast number of antlers which are ownerless, and which have completely baffled Prof. Gaudry, myself, and others for many years. It is, of course, easy for anyone to classify the flat antler as belonging to one species and the round to another; but the value of the determination depends upon the number of species living at the same time in the same place, possessed respectively of round and flattened antlers. In the pleistocene and prehistoric ages, there were four animals which had portions of their antlers flattened—the Reindeer, Irish Elk, true Elk, and Stag—to which, according to Dr. Jeitteles, must be added the Fallow Deer. In this particular case it is not only assumed that the flat-antler fragments belong to the last of these animals, but even the uncertain testimony of various authors, who had not critically examined the remains, which they record, in relation to the other species, is taken to prove the range of the Fallow Deer as far north as Denmark. The mere printed reference to the Fallow Deer is accepted as evidence, without, save in two cases, being verified by personal examination. The results of such a method of inquiry seem to me to demand most careful criticism.

The alleged cases of the discovery of Fallow Deer in Central and Northern Europe are as follows:—In Switzerland, it is stated to have been identified by Dr. Rütimeyer among the animals which had been used for food by the dwellers in the Lake villages; "although," he writes, "incontrovertible evidence of the spontaneous existence of this deer north of the Alps remains still to be obtained." In a list of the Swiss Mammalia which Dr. Rütimeyer was kind enough to prepare for me in 1873, the animal is altogether omitted from the pleistocene and prehistoric fauna. Thus, in the opinion of this high authority, it was not living in Switzerland in those early days. The animal is stated also (on the authority of Jäger in 1850) to have been found abundantly in "the caverns and turbaries as well as in the diluvial freshwater chalk of Wurtemburg."

To this I would oppose the opinion of my friend Prof. Oscar Fraas, of Stuttgardt, from whose list of animals (sent to me in 1872) the Fallow Deer is conspicuous by its absence. The Reindeer is abundant in the caves of that region, and to it the flattened fragments of antlers may probably be referred.

To pass over the reputed discovery of the animal "in an old place of sacrifice" near Schlieben, in 1828, in which the discoverer himself remarks that "the subject requires further investigation," there only remain three other sets of fragments to be examined in Germany. First, those at Olmütz, which Dr. Rütimeyer considered to belong possibly to the Stag; secondly, an indistinct figure in the 'Ossemens Fossiles' of an antler attached to a skull found at Stuttgardt, which seems to me to belong to the Reindeer; and, lastly, a fragment of antler from Buchberg, which, taken along with the find at Olmütz, is the second of the two cases identified by Dr. Jeitteles. It is a museum specimen, which may very probably be liable to the same doubts as those which are entertained by Dr. Rütimeyer regarding the fragments from Olmütz. The teeth and bones from Hamburg are as likely to belong to the Stag as to the Fallow Deer.

The alleged instances of the discovery of the animal in this country and in France are equally unsatisfactory. The flattened antlers alluded to by Buckland and Owen belong either to the Stag or the Reindeer. Among the many thousands of bones and teeth which I have examined from the ossiferous caves of various ages, from refuse-heaps and tumuli, I have never seen any fragment which could be attributed to Fallow Deer, except in refuse-heaps not older than the Roman occupation. Nor is it found in Ireland till the middle ages. The late lamented Prof. Ed. Lartet, whom I always consulted on difficult questions such as these, believed that the animal was not living in Central and Northern France in the pleistocene or prehistoric ages, but that it was imported probably by the Romans.

The only evidence against this view is that afforded by an antler dug up in Paris and brought to Prof. Gervais along with stone celts by some workmen. It seemed to me when I saw it in 1873, in the Jardin des Plantes, not altogether conclusive, because of the absence of proof that all the remains were obtained from the same undisturbed stratum. I should expect to find such antlers in the refuse-heaps of Roman Paris, as in Roman London, and I should not be at all surprised if the remains of widely different ages were mingled together by the workmen, even if they were found in the same excavation. As examples of the necessity of guarding against this source of error, I may quote a recent lower jaw of Kangaroo Rat in the collection of my late friend Mr, Wickham Flower, which was stated to have been dug out of the brick-earth near Sittingbourne, along with the Mammoth and other pleistocene creatures; the bones of an Ostrich brought to Prof. Busk, along with Mammoth and Hippopotamus from the gravels of Acton Green; and lastly, the skeleton of Fallow Deer found in a bog not far from the River Boyne above Leinster Bridge (Co. Kildare), along with a skull of Brown Bear (Scott, Journ. Geol. Soc. Dublin, vol. x. p. 151). This last case would have been taken as decisive that the animal lived in Ireland in prehistoric times as a contemporary of the Brown Bear, had not a silver collar round its neck proved that it had belonged to "a member of Lord Rosse's family."

From premises so unsatisfactory as those which have been examined, it seems to me very hazardous to conclude with Dr. Jeitteles that the Fallow Deer inhabited Northern and Central Europe in the pleistocene and prehistoric ages. The point, to say the very least, is non-proven. On the other hand, the non-discovery of certain relics of the animal by the many able naturalists who have examined vast quantities of fossil remains from those regions, implies, to my mind, the probability that the animal was not then in those parts of Europe. The value of negative evidence depends upon the number of observations, which in this case is enormous. To speak personally, I am in the position of a man waiting for satisfactory proof, holding that up to the present time the common Fallow Deer "has never been found to occur in the fossil state in Northern and Central Europe. The animal ought to be found fossil in those regions; and it is not for want of looking that it has not yet been found.

For the sake of clearness, I have reserved the reference to other forms of deer, in the essay, for separate discussion. The Cervus polignacus of Pomel, from Auvergne, is an obscure form without definition, about which I will not venture to say anything. The C. somonensis of Cuvier, which I have carefully studied in Paris along with Prof. Gervais, is identical with the form which I have described from Clacton, Essex (Quart. Geol. Journ., 1868, p. 514), under the name of Cervus Brownii. The latter has been identified by Prof. Busk among the fossil remains from Acton Green. The typical antler of Cuvier's species differs from plate xvii., fig. 4 of C. Brownii, in the possession of a palm of four points, and in being broken and badly restored with plaster at the point where the third tine, d, of my figure joins the beam. Whether this kind of antler belongs to a well-marked variety of Fallow Deer or to a closely-allied species, I will not offer an opinion. It seems, however, safer to follow Professors Lartet, Gaudry, and most of the naturalists since the days of Cuvier, in keeping the fossil separate from the living forms, none of which present, so far as I know, a similar variation of antler. Till such an antler be found it is better to keep the animals apart in classification. And even if they be viewed as belonging to one species, they have only been met with in pleistocene deposits in this country and in France, and they may reasonably be taken as visitors from the south, such as the contemporary Hippopotami. In any case, I would submit that they do not afford satisfactory grounds for believing with Dr. Jeitteles that the present distribution of the Fallow Deer in Northern and Central Europe by the hand of man is "an ancient fable." It is undoubtedly an ancient belief, and it is one which can be proved to some extent to be true by an appeal to the records of history.

To enter into the question of the introduction of Fallow Deer into Northern Europe would far outleap the limits of an article. A reference to Lenz's 'Zoologie der Alten,' and to Neckham's 'Natural History,' will show to what an extent the wealthy Romans and mediaeval barons were in the habit of importing wild and rare animals for the chase, as well as for the sake of mere curiosity.

 

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Sir Victor Brooke, writing "on the existence of the Fallow Deer in England during pleistocene times" ('Nature,' I4th Jan. 1875), has shown pretty conclusively that the species called Cervus Brownii, which was founded by Prof. Boyd Dawkins (Quart. Geol. Journ., 1868, p. 514) upon some abnormal antlers dug up at Clacton in Essex,^[3] is identical with Cervus dama, and that "under the former title the fact of the existence of the Fallow Deer in England during the pleistocene period lies in some degree obscured."

In this determination Prof. Boyd Dawkins himself has since expressed his concurrence ('Nature,' 21st Jan. 1875), remarking that Sir Victor Brooke's essay leaves no room for doubting that "the antlers named in the books Cervus Brownii and C. somonensis really belong to a variety of the living Fallow Deer," and he thanks the author "for having brought forward evidence on the point which is not presented by any of the large series known to me in the British and Continental Museums, and without which I could not venture to identify the fossil with the living form. He has supplied the missing link hitherto sought in vain, and thereby removed two synonyms from the bulky catalogue of fossil Mammalia."

But this has little to do with the question raised by Herr Jeitteles, namely, whether the Fallow Deer now living in Northern and Central Europe was introduced—like the horse into South America—by the hand of man.

On this point Sir Victor Brooke says (l.c.):—"Whether the Fallow Deer became extinct in Northern Europe before the advent of prehistoric man, or whether it continued to exist in these islands even at the commencement of the Roman occupation, are questions beside that of the truth of the "ancient belief" to which Mr. Boyd Dawkins shows such firm allegiance. "In either case the species may have been reintroduced by the Romans, a people whose magnificently lavish expenditure upon luxury and pleasure despised bounds."

 

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While on the subject of Fallow Deer, it will not be out of place to call attention to the fact that the Fallow Deer of Western Persia (and therefore presumably the animal found in Western Asia, referred to by Herr Jeitteles) has been shown by Sir Victor Brooke to be a larger animal distinct from Cervus dama. He has described and figured it under the name of Cervus mesopotamicus (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1875, pl. xxxviii.) from specimens procured in the Provinces of Khurzistan and Luristan, in Western Persia, at the head of the Persian Gulf.

The peculiarity of this species lies chiefly in the shape of the horns, which are palmated immediately above the burrs, with a strong cylindrical beam rising from the posterior corner of the palm, and terminating in three well-developed tines. In other words, the cylindrical beam is above the palmation, or precisely the reverse of what obtains in Cervus dama.

Sir Victor Brooke says:—"In the development from the fanshaped palm of a definite strong cylindrical beam, terminated with points, the new species presents a type of horn which stands unique amongst existing Cervidæ."

 

 

1. Reprinted from 'Nature,' December 10th, 1874.
2. See: Jeitteles, J.H. (1877). translation: Ullman, P.D. & J.E. Harting. "On the Geographical Distribution of the Fallow Deer Past and Present". The Zoologist. 3rd series, vol 1 (issue 3, March): 81–89.  (Wikisource-ed.)
3. Other specimens of this so-called species have been identified by Prof. Busk amongst the fossil remains from Acton Green.