"I brought with me a Stallion and a Mare, From the beautiful stud of Manannan, A Bull and a white Cow from Druim Cain, Which were given me by Muirn Munchain." No _known_ allusion occurs in this poem to the Giant Deer.[54] First, however, we must remember that no small number of the animals mentioned are quite unrecognisable; and that of those names to which an explanation is given, many are probably incorrectly rendered. Secondly, if it could be absolutely shewn that no allusion exists to that fine beast, it would not at all disprove its existence a thousand years before. Supposing that the _Megaceros_ became extinct soon after the colonisation of Ireland, and that this was several centuries before the Christian era, the distinctive name by which it had been known might well have died out and become extinct also, among a people unacquainted with letters. Or if a dim tradition of the animal and of its name still lingered here and there, it might well be omitted from a catalogue which professed to give the creatures actually collected in a living state at a given period. It would have been interesting to have been able to identify the Great Elk, but its introduction would have been a glaring anachronism. The enumeration of nearly a hundred and sixty quadrupeds and birds either indigenous to or naturalised in Ireland at so early a period, possesses, I say, a peculiar interest. If the editor's suggestion is correct, that the _Echtach_ was a bovine animal, then we have three distinct mentions of this family in the poem,--the Wild Oxen, the Echtachs, and the Bull and White Cow. The second and third of these were probably domesticated animals; the first one expressly "Wild." Now at least five distinct species of Oxen are known to have inhabited Europe and the British Isles during the later periods of the Tertiary era, which have been named respectively, _Bison priscus_, _Bos primigenius_, _frontosus_ and _longifrons_, and _Ovibos moschatus_. Of these, skulls of _Bos frontosus_ and _B. longifrons_ have been dug up in some numbers in Ireland. Some of these bear, in the perforation of the forehead, evident proof of having been slaughtered _secundum artem_, and therefore of having been domesticated. But one large skull of the _longifrons_ type, now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, has a cut in the forehead, into which can be accurately fitted several of the narrow bronze "celts," or arrow-heads so frequently dug up in Ireland; a pretty fair proof that this animal was killed by the hunter's arrow, and was therefore wild.