FAMILY II. - CERVIDE.
first made known the fact of teeth with the charac ter of ruminant molars, and of portions of antlers, being asso ciated with remains of Lophiodon and Mastodon in the fresh water miocene beds of Montabusard, department of the Loiret. These early ruminant fossils agreed in size with the roebuck ; but there were characters showing that they differed almost generically from all known deer. In 1834 Professor Kaup received from the miocene strata near Eppelsheim, Darmstadt, the entire cranium of a small Ruminant, the teeth of which were identical with those described and figured by Cuvier ; but the series being complete, showed that the animal had long procumbent canines, as in the Moschus moschiferus ; in some secondary characters of the teeth, however, as in the proportions of the premolars, and especially the presence of the first of that series, at least in the lower jaw, it was generi cally distinct from Moschus or Tragulus. Moreover, the animal had possessed, like the males of the small deer of India called " Muntjac," antlers as well as long canine teeth. Both in the miocene beds of Ingre and Eppelsheim, antlers have been found which were supported on long pedicles, as in the muntjac, and simply bifurcate near their end. It is probable that these horns, which have been referred to the nominal species Germs anocerus, may belong to the Dmacatherium of Kaup.
Other species of Cervidce were, however, associated with that remarkable form in the miocene period. Dr. Kaup ascribes some more or less mutilated antlers, which had been shed, to a species he calls C. dicranocerus. The beam rises from one to two inches without sending off any branch or brow antler ; it then sends off a branch so large and so oblique that the beam seems here to bifurcate ; the anterior prong is, how ever, the smallest and shortest. The writer has received similar shed and mutilated antlers from the red crag of Sussex, which seems to contain a melange of broken-up beds of eocene, mio cene, and pliocene age.* The cervine Ruminants have been divided into groups according to the forms of the antlers. Of the group with antlers expanded and flattened at top, of which the fallow-deer (Dana) is the type, no fossil examples have been found in Britain. Cuvier has described and figured antlers of great size from the pliocene deposits of the valley of the Somme, near Abbeville, which, from the relative position and direction of the brow-snag and mid-snag, and from the terminal palm, he regards as a large extinct species of fallow-deer ; the name Germs Samonensis has since been attached to this species.
But there once existed a group (Megaceros, fig. 125) charac terized by a form of antler at present unknown amongst exist ing species of deer. With a beam (b) expanding and flattening towards the summit, and a brow-snag (p), as in the Dama tribe, this antler shows a back-snag (bz). Moreover, in antlers, showing an expanse of ten feet in a straight line from tip to tip, and which, from their size and form, seem to have been deve loped by the deer at its prime, the brow-snag expands and sometimes bifurcates—a variety never seen in the fallow-deer, but which becomes exaggerated in the rein-deer group. The representative of the subgenus Megaceros is an extinct species (M. Haernicus, fig. 125), remarkable for its great size, and especially for the great relative magnitude and noble form of its antlers : it is the species commonly but erroneously called the " Irish elk ;" for it is a true deer, intermediate between the fallow and rein-deer ; and though most abundant in, it is not peculiar to, Ireland. In that country it occurs in the shell-marl underlying the extensive turbaries. In England its remains have been found in lacustrine beds, brick-earth, red crag, and ossiferous caves.* The rein-deer (Cervus Tarandus) has peculiar antlers (fig. 126), and proportionably the largest of any of existing species. The beam is somewhat flattened throughout, but expands only and suddenly at its extremity, a similar expansion charac terizing the brow-snag (br) and mid-snag (bz), two, three, or more points being developed from all these expansions in fully developed antlers. The brow-snag is remarkable for its length. There is also frequently a short back-snag. It is plain, therefore, from the presence of this snag, from the great rela tive size of the antlers, from the complex brow-snag, and the terminal expansion of the beam, that we have in the rein-deer the nearest of kin to the extinct Megaceros.