On the Northern Range of the Fallow Deer in Europe

Abstract

THE essay, illustrated by woodcuts, on the existence of the Fallow Deer in Pleistocene times in England, in NATURE (vol. xi. p. 210), leaves no room for doubting that the antlers named in the books Cervus brownie and Cervus somonensis, really belong to a variety of the living Fallow Deer. And I thank its author, Sir Victor Brooke, for having brought forward evidence on the point which is not presented by any of the large series of recent antlers known to me in the British and Continental Museums, and without which I could not venture to identify the fossil with the living form. He has supplied the missing link hitherto sought in vain, and thereby removed two synonyms from the bulky catalogue of fossil mammalia. This identification, however, as I have already remarked in NATURE (vol. xi., pp. 113, 114), has little, if anything, to do with the further question, raised by Drs. Jeitteles and Sclater, as to whether the Fallow Deer now living in Northern and Central Europe was introduced—like the horse into South America—by the hand of man ; and on this point I am glad to find my views shared by so high an authority on the Cervidæ as Sir Victor Brooke.