Dr Apjohn of Dublin made the following observations with regard to the animal matter in the bones:
‘The bone was subjected for two days to the action of dilute muriatic acid. When examined at the end of this period, it had become as flexible as a recent bone submitted to the action of the same solvent. The periosteum was in some parts puffed out by carbonic acid gas, disengaged from the bone, and appeared to be in a state of perfect soundness.
‘To a portion of the solution of the bone in the muriatic acid some infusion of galls was added, which caused a copious precipitate of a dun colour. This proved to be tannate of gelatine, mixed with a small portion of the tannate and gallate of iron.
‘The cartilage and gelatine, therefore, so far from being destroyed, had not been perceptibly altered by time.’”
Until Baron Cuvier published his account of these remains[420], they were generally believed to have belonged to the same species as the moose deer or elk of North America, an opinion which appears to have been first advanced by Dr Thomas Molyneux in 1697[421], and which depends principally on the exaggerated description of that animal given by Josselyn in his account of two voyages to New England, published in 1674, in which he states that it is sometimes twelve feet high, with horns of two fathoms wide! This was the more readily believed by the learned Doctor, as it tended to confirm him in a favourite theory which he seems to have entertained, that Ireland had once been joined to the New Continent.
But the assertions of Josselyn regarding the size of the American moose have not been confirmed by the testimony of later travellers, from whose observations it is now clearly ascertained that the only large species of deer inhabiting the northern parts of America are the wapiti or Canadian stag (Cervus canadensis), the rein-deer (C. Tarandus), and the moose or elk (C. Alces).
The peculiar branching of the brow antlers of the rein-deer, and the rounded horns of the wapiti[422], are characters sufficient to prevent us confounding either of these animals with the fossil species.
The palmate form of the horns of the elk gave greater probability to the opinion of its specific identity with the fossil animal.
A little attention, however, to a few circumstances, will shew a most marked difference between them.