The above is taken from several authorities, among which are Blackstone's Comm., book i. ch. iii.; and Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, vols. ii. iii. iv.
Tee Bee.
FOSSIL ELK OF IRELAND.
(Vol. ii., p. 494.; Vol. iii., p. 26.)
W. R. C. states that he is anxious to collect all possible information as to this once noble animal. I would have offered the following notes and references sooner, but that I was confident that some abler contributor to the pages of "Notes and Queries" would have brought out of his stores much to interest your natural history readers (whose Queries I regret are so few and far between), and at the same time elucidate some points touched upon by W. R. C., as to the period of its becoming extinct. Perhaps he would favour me with the particulars of "its being shot in 1553," and a particular reference to the plate alluded to in the Nuremberg Chronicle, as I have not been able to recognise in any of its plates the Cervus Megaceros, and I am disposed to question the correctness of the statement, that the animal existed so lately as the period referred to.
There is in the splendid collections of the Royal Dublin Society (which, unfortunately, is not arranged as it should be, from want of proper space), a fine skeleton of this animal, the first perfect one possessed by any public body in Europe:
"It is perfect" [I quote the admirable memoir drawn up for the Royal Dublin Society by that able comparative anatomist Dr. John Hart, which will amply repay a perusal by W. R. C., or any other naturalist who may feel an interest in the subject] "in every single bone of the framework which contributes to form a part of the general outline, the spine, the chest, the pelvis, and the extremities are all complete in this respect; and when surmounted by the head and beautifully expanded antlers, which extend out to a distance of nearly six feet on either side, form a splendid display of the reliques of the former grandeur of the animal kingdom, and carries back the imagination to the period when whole herds of this noble animal wandered at large over the face of the country."
Until Baron Cuvier published his account of these remains, they were generally supposed to be the same as those of the Moose deer or elk of N. America. (Vide Ann. du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, tom. xii., and Ossemens Fossiles, tom. iv.) This error seems to have originated with Dr. Molyneux in 1697. (Vide Phil. Trans., vol. xix.)
The perforated rib referred to was presented to the society by Archdeacon Maunsell, and