It has been ascertained that the marrow in some of the bones blazes like a candle; that the cartilage and gelatine, so far from having been destroyed, were not apparently altered by time.[24] Archdeacon Maunsell actually made soup of the bones, and presented a portion thereof to the Royal Dublin Society (whether they enjoyed it I have not heard; it must have been "a little high," I fear). They are frequently used by the peasantry for fuel. On the occasion of the rejoicings for the victory at Waterloo, a bonfire was made of these bones, and it was observed that they gave out as good a blaze as those of horses, often used for similar purposes.[25] Pepper, in his "History of Ireland," states that the ancient Irish used to hunt a very large black deer, the milk of which they used as we do that of the cow, and the flesh of which served them for food, and the skin for clothing. This is a very remarkable record; and is confirmed by some bronze tablets found by Sir William Betham, the inscriptions on which attested that the ancient Irish fed upon the milk and flesh of a great black deer. According to the "Annals of the Four Masters," Niel Sedamin, a king of Ireland before the Christian era, was so called because "the cows and the female deer were alike milked in his reign." The art of taming the wild deer and converting them into domestic cattle is said to have been introduced by Flidisia, this monarch's mother. Deer are said to have been used to carry stones and wood for Codocus when his monastery was built, as also to carry timber to build the castle of a king of Connaught. These may have been red deer, but as there is good proof that the giant deer was really domesticated, it seems more likely that such offices should have been performed by the latter than by the former. An interesting letter from the Countess of Moira, published in the "Archæologia Britannica," gives an account of a human body found in gravel under eleven feet of peat, soaked in the bog-water; it was in good preservation, and completely clothed in antique garments of deer-hair, conjectured to be that of the Giant Elk. A skull of the same animal has been discovered in Germany in an ancient drain, together with several urns and stone-hatchets. And in the museum of the Royal Dublin Society there exists a fossil rib bearing evident token of having been wounded by some sharp instrument which remained long infixed in the wound, but had not penetrated so deep as to destroy the creature's life. It was such a wound as the head of an arrow, whether of flint or of metal, would produce.