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
