Part 44

To proceed with a description of the several parts of this specimen in detail, I shall commence with the horns, which give the animal its chief characteristic feature.

The horns.--That the description of these may be the more intelligible, I will first explain the terms which I mean to apply to their several parts. Each horn consists of the socket or root, the burr or coronary circle, the beam or shaft, the palm and the antlers.

The socket or root is the part of the horn which grows out of the frontal bone, and which is never shed; it is smooth, of a brown colour, an inch and half in length, and eleven inches three quarters in circumference; in the animal’s lifetime it was covered by the skin. The coronary or bead-like circle, or burr, is a ring of small, hard, whitish prominences, resembling a string of pearls, which encircles the junction of the socket with the part of the horn which falls annually from the heads of all deer.

The beam or shaft extends outwards, with a curvature whose concavity looks downwards, and backwards. This part is nearly cylindrical at its root, and its length equals about one-fourth of that of the whole horn; its outer end is spread out and flattened on its upper surface, and is continuous with the palm, which expands outwards in a fan-like form, the outer extremity of which measures two feet ten inches across, being its broadest part. Where the beam joins the palm the horn undergoes a kind of twist, the effect of which on the palm is, to place its edges above and below, and its surfaces anterior and posterior; the anterior surface is convex, and looks outwards; the posterior is concave, and its surface looks towards that of the opposite palm. Such is the position of the horns, when the head is so placed that the zygomatic arch is parallel to the horizon, as it would be during progression, or whilst the animal stands in an easy posture.

The antlers are the long pointed processes which project from the horns, two of which grow from the beam anteriorly; the first comes off immediately from the root, and is directed downwards, overhanging the orbit; this is called the brow antler, which, in this specimen, is divided into two points at its extremity.

The other antler, which comes off from the beam, we may call the sur-antler: in this specimen it consists of a broad plate or palm, concave on its upper surface, horizontal in its direction, and forked into two points anteriorly,--an appearance which I have not observed in any other specimen of upwards of forty which I have seen, nor do I find it marked in any of the plates of those bones extant.

There is one antler given off posteriorly from the junction of the beam with the palm: it runs directly backwards parallel to the corresponding one of the opposite horn. The inferior edge of the palm beyond this runs outwards and backwards: it is obtuse and thick, and its length is two feet six inches. From the anterior and external borders of each palm there come off six long pointed antlers. None of these are designated by any particular name. The number of the antlers of both sides taken together is twenty-two.

The surface of the horns is of a lightish colour, resembling that of the marl in which they were found; they are rough, and marked with several arborescent grooves, where the ramifications of the arteries by which they had been nourished during their growing state were lodged. The horns, with the head attached, weighed eighty-seven pounds avoirdupois. The distance between their extreme tips in a right line is nine feet two inches.

Head.--The forehead is marked by a raised ridge extended between the roots of the horns; anterior to this, between the orbits and the root of the nose, the skull is flat; there is a depression on each side in front of the root of the horn and over the orbit, capable of lodging the last joint of the thumb, at the bottom of which is the superciliary hole, large enough to give passage to an artery proportioned to the size of the horns. Inferior to the orbit we have the lachrymatory fossa, and the opening left by the deficiency of bone common to all deer, and remarkable for being smaller in this than in any other species.

Below the orbits the skull grows suddenly narrower, and the upper parts of the nasal bones become contracted by a depression on either side, at the lower part of which is the infra-orbitar hole. The opening of the nares is oval, being five inches long by three broad, the greatest breadth being in the centre. From the roots of the horns to the occipital spine measures three inches and an half; the occiput descends at a right angle with this, being three inches deep to the foramen magnum: the greatest breadth of the occiput is eight inches. The temporal fossæ approach to within two inches of each other behind the horns.

Teeth.--They do not differ from those of animals of the ruminating class. The incisors were not found, having dropped out; there is no mark of canine teeth; the molares are not much worn down, and are twenty-four in number.

The skeleton measures, from the end of the nose to the tip of the tail, ten feet ten inches. The spine consists of twenty-six vertebræ, viz. seven cervical, thirteen dorsal, and six lumbar. The size of the cervical vertebræ greatly exceeds that of the other classes, and the spines of the dorsal rise to a foot in height. The necessity of these bones being so marked is obvious, considering the strong cervical ligament, and powerful muscles, required for supporting and moving a head which, at a moderate calculation, must have sustained a weight of three quarters of a hundred of solid bony matter.

The extremities are in proportion to the different parts of the trunk, and present a conformation favourable to a combination of great strength with fleetness.

It is not the least remarkable circumstance connected with these bones, that they are in such a high state of preservation as to present all the lines and impressions of the parts which had been attached to them in the recent state. Indeed, if we examine them as compared with the bones of an animal from which all the softer parts have been separated by maceration, the only perceptible differences in their physical properties are, that they are a little heavier, a degree harder, that their surface is brown, and that they all, with the exception of the horns, present a polished appearance, which is owing to the periosteum having been preserved, and still remaining to cover them, as was discovered when they were chemically examined.

The existence of fat or adipocire in the shaft of one of the bones mentioned by Archdeacon Maunsell, and which I saw in his possession, is a thing for which it is extremely difficult to account, as it occurred but in one solitary instance, and it did not appear that this bone was at all differently circumstanced from the rest. Those which I had an opportunity of examining, by boring holes in them, were hollow, and contained, for the most part, only a small quantity of black animal earth.

Mr Stokes found, in a rib of this animal,

Animal matter, 42.87 Phosphates with some Fluates, 43.45 Carb., Lime 9.14 Oxides, 1.02 Silica, 1.14 Water and loss, 2.38 ------ 100.00

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, 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, 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, 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.

First, as to size, the difference is very remarkable, it not being uncommon to find the fossil horns ten feet between the extreme tips, while the largest elk’s horns never measure four feet. This measurement in a pair in the Museum of the Royal Dublin Society, is three feet seven inches: the largest pair seen by Pennant in the house of the Hudson’s Bay Company, measured thirty-four inches.

The horn of the elk has two palms, a lesser one which grows forward from the front of the beam, where the principal palm begins to expand. This is called brow antler by Cuvier, but it corresponds in situation rather to the sur-antler, there being, properly speaking, no brow antler attached to the root of the beam. The elk has no posterior antler similar to that of the fossil animal, nor does its beam take a similar arched direction, but runs more directly outwards.