12
The Ancient Fauna or Essex.
Gigantic Beaver, the Gigantic Irish Deer (fig. 5), Sedgwick's
Deer, the Red Deer (still living), the Horse, and the Fox.
It would be interesting if we could by any possibility picture
to ourselves the conditions of life, and the conditions of
Pig. 5.—Skeleton of Gigantic Irish Deer Cervus (Megaceros) hibernicus,
Owen. Met with in the shell-marls and clays beneath the peat-bogs in
Ireland. [Reproduced, by the courtesy of Messrs. A. and C. Black, from
Prof. Owen's 'Paleontology,' p. 405.]
climate in Britain under which animals of such varied charac-
ters lived, the remains of which are met with in a single series
of deposits such as the Thames Valley affords ! We cannot
avoid the conclusion that a very great change must have