It cannot be doubted that, like all existing deer, the animal shed its antlers periodically, and such shed antlers have been found. When it is recollected that all the osseous matter of which they are composed must have been drawn from the blood carried along certain arteries to the head, in the course of a few months, our wonder may well be excited at the vigorous circulation that took place in these parts.
In the Red Deer the antlers, weighing about 24 lbs., are developed in the course of about ten weeks; but what is that compared to the growth of over 80 lbs. weight in some three or four months?
It is a mistake to suppose that the remains discovered in Ireland were found in peat; they occur not in the peat, but in shell-marls and in clays _under the peat_. This is an important point For if the remains _were_ found in the peat, they would prove that the Great Deer survived into a later period; instead of being (as is believed from geological evidence) contemporary with the Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros in this country, and then disappearing from view. As already stated, it existed on the Continent, and may there have been exterminated by man.
Mr. W. Williams, who has explored several peat-bogs in Ireland, marking the site of ancient lakes, and found many specimens in beds underlying the peat, has given much interesting information bearing upon the question of the period when the Great Deer inhabited Ireland, and the manner in which it was preserved in the lake-beds.[79] He spent ten weeks in 1876-77, excavating deer remains in the bog of Ballybetagh, and subsequently made similar excavations in the counties of Mayo, Limerick, and Meath. These peat-bogs occupy the basins of lakes, the deeper hollows of which have long since been silted up with marls, clays, and sands, and in this silt, or mud, the plants which produced the peat grew. In all the bogs examined he found a general resemblance in the order of succession of the beds, with only slight variations in the nature of the materials such as might be easily accounted for by differences in the surrounding rocks. In these deposits the geologist may read, as in a book, the successive changes in climate that have taken place since the time when the country was deeply covered with snow and ice during the Glacial period.