The existing species (Taranclua) is restricted to northern latitudes, ranging to extreme ones in Europe, and in America from the Arctic Circle southward to the latitude of Newfound land, where the large variety called Carabou' still exists. Rein-deer of similar size, ranged over continental Europe,appear to have been seen by Caesar in Germany, and have left good Skull and antlers of Calm Rwanda,.
evidence of their existence in many parts of England. The specimen figured (fig. 126) was found in pleistocene "till'' at Bilney Moor, East Dereham.
A large deer, with subcompressed ramified antlers, slightly expanding at the base of the terminal divisions, but differing from the rein-deer in the absence of the brow-snag, has left its remains in the pleistocene sands of Riege, near Pezenas, France. It is the Cervus martialis of Gervais ; and seems to have been an intermediate form between the rein-deer (Taran dus) and the elk (Aloes). There is no existing representative of this interesting annectant form of deer.
In formations of corresponding age in France, called a allu vions volcaniques" by Gervais,* fossil antlers of two other extinct species of deer have been discovered, in which, as in Alces, the brow-antler is absent, but in which the beam does not expand into a palm.
In North America remains of a large deer (Germs ameri canus fossilis, Harlan), much resembling the Wapiti (Cervus canaclensis) have been found in pleistocene deposits on the banks of the Ohio. In South America Dr. Lund discovered fossil antlers of two species in bone-caves in Brazil : they were associated with remains of an ante lope (Antilope maguinensis, Lund) of which genus no living representative is now known in South America.
Of deer with antlers of the type of the existing red deer (C. elaphus), a species is indicated in pleistocene beds and bone caves which rivalled the ifegaceros Antler of Red-deer, from alluvium, Ireland.
Fig. 127 represents one of a pair of antlers from the bed of the Boyne at Drogheda, now in the museum of Sir Philip Egerton, Bart., which measures 30 inches in length, and sends off not fewer than fifteen branches or " snags." a is the " brow-snag," which rises immediately above the " burr ;" b the second, c the third, and d the " crown" or terminal cluster of snags, which gave to the deer developing them at the period of his full perfection the title of " crowned hart." The little roebuck, like the red-deer, appears from its fossil remains to have continued to exist from the prehistorical pleistocene times to the present period.
CsaravoRs.
The quadrupeds which subsist by preying upon others co-existed under corresponding varieties of form, and in ade quate numbers, with the numerous and various Herbivora of the newer tertiary periods. A brief description has already been made of some of the singular forms, the genera of which are extinct, that lived in eocene and miocene times.