d deer, but as there is good proof
that the giant deer was really domesticated, it seems more likely that
such offices should have been performed by the latter than by the
former.

An interesting letter from the Countess of Moira, published in the
"Archaeologia Britannica," gives an account of a human body found in
gravel under eleven feet of peat, soaked in the bog-water; it was in
good preservation, and completely clothed in antique garments of
deer-hair, conjectured to be that of the Giant Elk.

A skull of the same animal has been discovered in Germany in an ancient
drain, together with several urns and stone-hatchets. And in the museum
of the Royal Dublin Society there exists a fossil rib bearing evident
token of having been wounded by some sharp instrument which remained
long infixed in the wound, but had not penetrated so deep as to destroy
the creature's life. It was such a wound as the head of an arrow,
whether of flint or of metal, would produce.

In the year 1846, a very interesting corroboration of the opinion long
held by some that the great broad-horned Deer was domesticated by the
ancient Irish, was given by the discovery of a vast collection of bones
at Lough Gur, near Limerick. The word Gur is said to mean "an
assemblage," so that the locality is "the Lake of the Assemblage,"
commemorating perhaps the gathering of an army or some other host at the
spot. In the midst of the lake is an island, which is described as being
so completely surrounded with bones and skulls of animals "that one
would think the cattle of an entire nation must have been slaughtered to
procure so vast an assemblage."

The skulls are described as belonging to the following animals:--The
giant deer (females); a deer of inferior size; the stag; another species
of stag; the fallow deer; the broad-faced ox; the hollow-faced ox; the
long-faced ox; another species of ox; the common short-horned ox; the
goat; and the hog.

The principal points of interest centred in the Giant Deer or so-called
Irish Elk. The skulls of these, as of all the larger animals, "were
broken in by some sharp and heavy instrument, and in the same manner as
butchers of the present day slaughter cattle for our markets, and in
many cases the marrow-bones were broken across, as if to get at the
marrow."

Of course, if this was indubitable, the conclusion was inevitable, that
the Giant Deer was not only contemporary with man, but was domesticated
by him with othe