Perfect skeletons are occasionally procured from marshes, where the animals had become mired. In life this species appears to have measured from twelve to thirteen feet in height and twenty-four to twenty-five feet in length, including seven feet for the tusks. Undigested food found with its remains show that it lived partly on spruce and fir-trees. A distinct species characterised the Quaternary deposits of South America. THE IRISH ELK.--The species (_Megaceros hibernicus_), commonly but erroneously called the Irish Elk, was, as professor Owen[52] has pointed out, a true deer, whose place is between the fallow and reindeer. Though now extinct, it survived the Palæolithic period, and may possibly have existed down to historic times. Mr. Gosse adduces some very strong testimony on this point, and is of opinion that its extinction cannot have taken place more than a thousand years ago. It had a flattened and expanded form of antler, with peculiarities unknown among existing deer, and was, in comparison with these, of gigantic size; the height to the summit of the antlers being from ten to eleven feet in the largest individuals, and the span of the antlers, in one case, over twelve feet. Although its remains have been found most abundantly in Ireland, it was widely distributed over Britain and middle Europe. It has been found in peat swamps, lacustrine marls, bone caverns, fen deposits, and the Cornish gravels. It has been obtained from the cavern of Goyet in Belgium, and from the burial-place at Aurignac, in the department of the Haute Garonne. Its known range in time is from the early part of the Glacial period down to, possibly, historic periods. The CAVE-HYÆNA.--_Hyæna spelæa_ of Goldfuss--is, like the cave-bear, characteristic of Europe during the Palæolithic age. It has been found in numerous caves in Britain, such as Kent's Hole, the Brixham cave, and one near Wells in Somersetshire, explored by Dawkins in 1859; in all of these the remains are associated with those of man, or with his implements. This species is closely related to the _H. crocuta_ of Zimm, at present existing in South Africa, and is by some geologists considered identical with it. It is, however, larger. It appears to have to some extent replaced the cave-bear in Britain; we are also, doubtless, greatly indebted to it for some of the extensive collections of bones in caverns, resulting from the carcases which it had dragged thither, and imperfectly destroyed.