Professor Canestrini,[1] and more recently Mortillet,[2] have given some account. In 1870, at my request, Dr. Carlo Boni, subsequently Director of the Museum of Modena, had the goodness to send to me at Basle—where I was spending the winter of 1869–70—these two fragments for comparison with mine from Olmütz, when Professor Rütimeyer, who also saw them, determined that one of them (marked "624 Gorzano") must have belonged to Cervus dama.
As well as in Moravia, the Fallow Deer seems, in olden times, to have existed on the borders of Lower Austria. In Pulkau, not far from Eggenburg, south of the Thaya, in an ancient place of sacrifice, discovered and described by Dr. Woldrich, were found earthen vessels, implemenls of stone, bone and horn, a bronze casting-mould, the remains of the dog, ox, and red deer, and a piece of horn that was conjectured to be "the tine of a Fallow Deer's antler."[3]
That the Fallow Deer inhabited the woods of Switzerland in the middle ages may be gathered from the following words in the Benediction of the monk Ekkehard, of St. Galle, who lived in the eleventh century:—"Imbellem damam faciat benedictio summam;"[4] and even at a later date, according to a statement in Forer's German edition of Gesner's 'Natural History' (Heidelberg, 1606, p. 84), where it is said that "The Fallow Deer is hunted in many other places, and is frequently captured in the woods of Switzerland and near Lucerne: it is called Dam, Dämlin, or Damhirsch." In the Latin edition, however (Hist. An., vol. i., 2nd ed., Frankfort, 1620), which is now before me, I can find no important observations on the appearance of the Fallow Deer in Switzerland. The author merely states (p. 308[5]), "Nostra vero dama etiam in Europa capitur cum alibi tum circa Oceanum Germanicum, ut audio. Germani vulgo vocant Dam, vel Dämlin, vel Dannhirtz, vel Damhirtz potius; Itali, Daino, nonnulli Danio; Galli, Dain vel Daim; Hispani, Gamo vel Corza." Moreover, in
- ↑ 'Oggetti trovati nelle terremare del Modenese, Seconda Relazione: Avanzi Organici,' Modena, 1866.
- ↑ 'Matériaux pour l'Histoire Positive et Philosophique de l'Homme," 3me année, 1867.
- ↑ Woldrich, 'Mittheilungen der anthropologiscben gesellschaft in Wien,' vol. iii., 1873, pp. 13 and 19, and plate iv., fig. 54.
- ↑ 'Bened. ad mensas Ekkehardi,' Vers. 128. Vide 'Mittheil. der. Antiquar. Gesellschaft zu Zurich,' iii., p. 111.
- ↑ Historia Animalium etc. (1602), p. 308 (Wikisource-Ed.)
