it into
his possession.... Dr Martin informs me that on the banks of the river
Suir, near Portland, Waterford, and on nearly every farm, are found,
near springs, spaces of frequently seventy feet in diameter, consisting
of stones, broken up as if for roads, and lying together in a mass.
These stones were evidently purposely broken, and all much of one size,
and are charred. These spaces are many feet in depth. The tradition
respecting them is current among the peasantry, that here in olden time,
a great deer was killed and baked in these stone-pits, the stones having
been previously heated like a kiln, and they also distinguish the animal
as the 'Irish Elk.' These places are called in Irish by a name
signifying the 'Buck's Den.'"

[Illustration: SPEARING THE ANCIENT ELK.]

From all these testimonies combined, can we hesitate a moment in
believing that the Giant Deer was an inhabitant of Ireland since its
colonisation by man? It seems to me that its extinction cannot have
taken place more than a thousand years ago. Perhaps at the very time
that Caesar invaded Britain the Celts in the sister isle were milking and
slaughtering their female elks, domesticated in their cattlepens of
granite, and hunting the proud-antlered male with their flint arrows and
lances. It would appear, that the mode of hunting him was to chase and
terrify him into pools and swamps, such as the marl-pits then were;
that, having thus disabled him in the yielding bogs, and slain him, the
head was cut off, as of too little value to be worth the trouble of
dragging home; that the under jaws and tongue were cut off; and that
frequently the entire carcase was disjointed on the spot, the best parts
only being removed. This would account for the so frequent occurrence of
separate portions of the skeleton, and especially of skulls, in the
bog-earth. No doubt so large an animal would not long survive in a state
of freedom, after an island so limited in extent as Ireland became
peopled throughout; and supposing the females to have been
domesticated, it is quite conceivable that the difficulty or even danger
of capturing or domesticating the males, may have caused the species
soon to become extinct in captivity, when it no longer continued to
exist in a wild state. Thus we may perhaps account for the certainly
remarkable fact that no native Irish name has been recognised as
belonging to it;--remarkable, because the Irish tongue is particularly
rich in distinc