THE GREAT IRISH DEER AND STELLER’S SEA-COW.
“And, above all others, we should protect and hold sacred those types, Nature’s masterpieces, which are first singled out for destruction on account of their size, or splendour, or rarity, and that false detestable glory which is accorded to their most successful slayers. In ancient times the spirit of life shone brightest in these; and when others that shared the earth with them were taken by death they were left, being more worthy of perpetuation. Like immortal flowers they have drifted down to us on the ocean of time, and their strangeness and beauty bring to our imaginations a dream and a picture of that unknown world, immeasurably far removed, where man was not: and when they perish, something of the gladness goes out of nature, and the sunshine loses something of its brightness.”—W. H. Hudson, in The Naturalist in La Plata.
Among the extinct animals of prehistoric times the “Great Irish Elk,”[77] as it is generally called, deserves special notice, both from the enormous size of its antlers, and from the fact that its remains are exceedingly plentiful in Ireland.
[77] The term “Elk” is misleading, for it is not an elk (alces) at all, but a true Cervus (stag). It should be called “the Great Irish Deer.”
This magnificent creature, so well depicted by our artist ([Plate XXV.]), was, however, by no means confined to Ireland; its remains are found in many parts of Great Britain, particularly in cave deposits, and also on the Continent. Some writers think that it was contemporary with men in Ireland; it may have been so, but at present the question cannot be considered as proved. Mr. R. J. Ussher, who found its remains in a cave near Cappagh, Cappoquin, thinks he has obtained evidence to show that it was hunted by man at the time when he hunted reindeer in this part of Europe, but the age of the strata containing the remains is doubtful. Again, there is a rib in the Dublin Museum with a perforation which is sometimes taken to be the result of a wound from a dart, arrow, or spear; but the wound may have been inflicted by one of the sharp tynes in a fight between two bucks.
Dr. Hart mentions the discovery of a human body in gravel, under eleven feet of peat, soaked in bog-water, in good preservation, and completely clothed in antique garments of hair, which it has been conjectured might be that of the Great Deer. But if some individual animal had perished and left its body under the like circumstances, its hide and hair ought equally to have been preserved. Dr. Molyneux, to whom we owe the first account of its discovery, says that its extinction in Ireland has occurred “so many ages past, as there remains among us not the least record in writing, or any manner of tradition, that makes so much as mention of its name; as that most laborious inquirer into the pretended ancient but certainly fabulous history of this country, Mr. Roger O’Flaherty, the author of Ogygia, has lately informed me.”[78]
[78] Philosophical Transactions, vol. xix. p. 490.
In the romance of the “Niebelungen,” now immortalised by Wagner, which was written in the thirteenth century, the word shelch occurs, and is applied to one of the beasts slain in a great hunt a few hundred years before that time in Germany. This word has been cited by some naturalists as probably signifying the Great Irish Deer. But this is mere conjecture, and the word might apply to some big Red Deer. The total silence of Cæsar and Tacitus respecting such remarkable animals renders it highly improbable that they were known to the ancient Britons.