Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/116

90 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