ancient Reindeer of Great Britain was not relatively so large as many individuals now living. The bones found in English caverns, and that of Shandon, in Ireland,[1] were fragmentary, and had evidently been dragged there by predaceous animals. There are, however, two splendid heads, almost entire, from the bog marls now in the museum of the Royal Dublin Society, one of which has been already referred to in connection with the discovery of the skulls and bones of the Giant Deer; the other, and more perfect of the two, is from a neighbouring locality among the Dublin mountains.
As known to us at the present time, the Reindeer is associated with an Arctic climate. It is, however, still not uncommon in North America as far south as New Brunswick, and was even common lately in the forests of New England, latitude 40°. But doubtless the climate of our islands in former days was much colder than at present; indeed, the same may be said of Central Europe, inasmuch as Reindeer remains have been found in the caverns of the South of France.
There are no ruminating animals more given to extensive migration than many varieties of the living Reindeers of North America and Asia, so that their northern and southern limits frequently include many degrees of latitude. They are easily hunted down, and consequently soon exterminated from particular tracts.
The Red Deer, like the Roebuck, the Mole, and the Water Rat, is one of the few survivors of the extensive list of mammals which inhabited Great Britain during the Pliocene epoch—i.e. the epoch which immediately preceded the glacial period. Their pedigrees, therefore, are as ancient as any in the land—at all events, so far as the discovery of fossil relics is concerned; but in all probability neither of the two first-named would have survived but for the protective influence of man.
Remains of the Red Deer are met with in peat and superficial soils; in clay and marl below the latter; in more ancient cavern deposits, associated with relics of nearly all the extinct and several living species, as well as in estuaries and river deposits, said to have been formed before the glacial epoch. The bones and horns
- ↑ Shandon Cave, near Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, where bones of upwards of fifty individuals have been found associated with those of the Wild Horse, Mammoth, Red Deer, Wolf, Bear, and Fox.—Ed.
