"Reindeer (_Cervus tarandus_).--There are two more or less fragmentary
portions of horns, which, after a good deal of comparison with other
reindeer horns, and with fragments of red deer horns, I incline to
set down as indicating the presence of the former animal in this
collection. It is easy to separate reindeer horns from red deer horns
when you have the entire antler before you, or even when you have the
brow antler only, in most cases; and it is usually easy to separate
even a fragment if the fragment is fresh, because the surfaces of the
horns in these two horns are different. But here the two fragmentary
horns in question have no brow antler left, and their surfaces have
been macerated so long as to have desquamated, or, to change from a
medical to a geological metaphor, have been denuded a good deal. Still
one fragment is, I think, too tabular, and the other is too tabular
also, and that just below the origin of what in the red deer is known
as the sur-royal antler, to be anything but a reindeer's.
"Writing for Scottish readers, I need not refer to Dr. J. A. Smith's
paper 'On Remains of the Reindeer in Scotland,' read before the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, June 14, 1869, vol. viii. pt.
i. pp. 186-223, nor to his references in that exhaustive memoir to
preceding writers. But I may mention an additional reference which Dr.
J. A. Smith, not being gifted with as much second sight as he is with
insight, could not have then referred to, as it is contained in a book
of more recent date than is his paper. This reference will be found in
Mr. Joseph Anderson's edition of the _Orkneyinga Saga_, chap. vi. p.
182."
* * * * *
Regarding a subsequent consignment of bones and horns sent to Professor
Rolleston, he writes as follows:--
"The only remark which I feel called upon to make relates to the
bones and the teeth of the pig; the marrow cavity in the lower jaw
of one of the pigs, a young specimen, containing a large quantity of
crystals, and the teeth of the older pigs showing a great deal of wear
for the teeth of what were, I think, domesticated swine. The crystals
were analysed by W. W. Fisher, Esq., of the Chemical Department in
the Oxford Museum, and found to be vivianite as supposed. It is not
uncommon to have bones from prehistoric 'finds,' which have been much
acted on either by fire or water, thus coloured by double decomposition
of the bone phosphate with some iron salt furnished either from the
bone and flesh or otherwise.
"The horns" (all the worked ones in the collection) "received a few
days ago are all of Red Deer (_Cervus elaphus_), except one, which is
of _Cervus capreolus_. With this consignment came one bone, or rather
the ulna and radius of a _Bos longifrons_, more or less fused into one
bone. The horn of the Roe is rather a large one."
THE FLORA OF THE CRANNOG.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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