Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 4 (1846).djvu/14

viii pear to have been the rejectamenta of some slaughter-house: they consist principally of the skulls of cattle (Bos), of two or three species,—red deer, giant deer (Cervus megaceros), goats, and pigs of more than one species: and there also occur, but not in abundance, bones of the rein-deer. The skulls of the cattle, and some of the pigs, have large ragged fractures in the frontal bone, exactly similar to those which appear in the skulls of bullocks slaughtered at the present day with the pole-axe; and there seems no reasonable ground for doubting that the animals to which these skulls belonged also met their death from the hands of man, and by means of a very similar instrument. But the most remarkable circumstance is this—that among the skulls so fractured are two most unmistakeable specimens of female giant deer: to these my attention was particularly invited; and I have not the least hesitation in expressing my firm conviction that the fractures were the result of human hands, and were the cause of the death of the animals. These two fractured skulls correspond too exactly with each other, and with that of a bullock with which I compared them to have resulted from accident: the edges of the fractures wore an appearance of being coeval with the interment or submergence of the skulls, and presented a very strikingly different appearance from a fracture recently made, and which I had the opportunity of examining. There were several skulls of the male of the same species, one bearing enormous antlers, but none exhibiting the slightest trace of frontal fracture.

It is well known to palaeontologists that remains of the giant deer have been discovered in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Norfolk, Essex, and I believe other English counties, and still more recently I hear of its having been discovered on the continent: there was also an accredited legend, that a skeleton now in the museum of the University of Edinburgh, was found in the Isle of Man; but it is now stated that a person named Crampton bought this in Dublin, carried it to the Isle of Man and sold it to the Duke of Athol, who presented it to the University. I am quite willing to leave this question in the hands of the disputants without expressing