has since become extinct. Very generally the bones are found in juxtaposition, so as to prove that their possessors had been bogged. In one case Archdeacon Maunsel described in 1825 two heads, with the antlers interlocked in a fight between two bucks, in which both perished.
Sometimes the Irish elks have been drowned, and their bones distributed by water. In Ballybetagh bog, near Dublin, the heads are frequently found lying together and apart from the rest of the bones of the skeleton, a circumstance which, as Mr. E. J. Moss[1] pointed out to me, cannot be accounted for except by the above hypothesis. The rarity of the animal in Britain forms a marked contrast with its abundance in Ireland. It has been discovered in the peaty mud near Newbury, in Berkshire, and in the marl below the peat in the parish of Maybole, Ayrshire.
The Irish elk is proved from recent discoveries by Mr. R. J. Ussher, in a cave near Cappagh, Cappoquin, Waterford, to have been hunted, as well as the reindeer, by man; but the age of the strata in which it is found appears to me to be doubtful. The perforated rib in
- ↑ My thanks are due to this gentleman, and his brother, Dr. Moss, for their courtesy and kindness in having excavations made to show the exact position of the remains in the bog, at the meeting of the British Association at Dublin in 1878. The bog occupies the site of a tarn, and rests on the boulder clay. Above the latter is a thin layer of blue fluviatile clay, which, as it passes up towards the peat, becomes more and more mingled with black, peaty material. The animal remains rested in and on the blue clay, passing upwards through the peaty mud; in one case, which I have examined, the antler tips were within six inches of the upper friable black peat. Prof. Leith Adams believes that Irish elks have never been met with in peat bogs. There are, however, many cases on record of their occurrence in peat, and Mr. Kinahan, whose experience in Irish geology is second to none, informs me that they do occur in the Irish peat.
