e slightest trace of frontal
fracture."[26]

A circumstance of much importance is that these skulls were found in
company with those of many well-known domestic animals, as the ox, the
goat, and the hog. _These skulls were similarly fractured._ As it is
evident that _their_ demolition was produced by the butcher's pole-axe,
why not that of the elk-skulls?

"At the first cursory glance, it may appear somewhat strange that the
skulls of the males should invariably have been found entire, and that
even the recent discovery at Lough Gur should form no exception.

"I do not, however, find any difficulty here. In the first place, we may
fairly suppose that males, like our bulls, were not equally prized as
food. In the second place, the size, as well as the position of the
antlers, would render it next to an impossibility to give the desired
blow with the pole-axe. In the third place, the greater strength and
thickness of the skull would almost to a certainty render the blow
unavailing; and in the fourth place, supposing the females domesticated,
and the occasional tenants of sheds and other buildings, we may well
imagine that the males were excluded from such buildings by the enormous
size of their antlers. Perhaps a few only of the males, as in our
cattle, were suffered to become adult, one male sufficing for many
females. Perhaps the males were allowed free range, the females only
being permitted at stated seasons to accompany them. In fine, the more
we investigate probabilities, the more we reason from present experience
and knowledge, the less difficulty shall we find in the way of believing
the gigantic deer of Ireland an animal coeval with man and subservient
to his uses."[27]

In a communication subsequently made to the _Zoologist_ by Mr
Richardson, he gives the following additional evidence:--"In the
collection of the late Mr Johnston, of Down, which had been left by his
uncle, an attorney, and in which everything was labelled with the
accuracy and precision of that profession, is a small brass spear, with
a piece of wood still in the socket, with a label, stating it to have
been found in a marl-pit, among the bones of a deer. An excise-officer
told me that he saw, found in a marl-pit, at Mentrim in Meath, the
skeleton of a deer, and a man, and a long knife: the latter, I believe,
is rather a short sword, now, I think, in the collection of Mr Petrie,
of Dublin, who told me that some such tradition had accompanied