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That the elk, Alces machlis, was an inhabitant of Great Britain in prehistoric times is now an established fact. Sir Richard Owen, in 1846, did not obtain satisfactory evidence of the elk as a British fossil, and consequently the genus is not included among his ‘British Fossil Mammals’ published at that date: writing, however, in 1869, he accepted the recorded discovery of elk-remains in a peaty bed in Northumberland, and himself described certain bones of the same species from a similar peaty deposit at Walthamstow, Essex. In the light of more recent discoveries, it seems likely that some of the earlier accounts of the discovery of elk-remains, which had been discredited, were really founded on bones or antlers of Alces machlis, and were not, as had been thought possible, due to a wrong determination of the specimens, or to the misuse of the name ‘elk.’ However that may be, numerous reliable accounts have since been published, which have established the occurrence of the true elk (Alces machlis) in a semifossil state at numerous localities in both England and Scotland. Two specimens referable to Alces machlis are said to have been found in Ireland. One is a skull with antlers, preserved in the Belfast Museum; but Leith Adams, having specially examined this skull, came to the conclusion that it was of recent origin and had been imported into Ireland. The second specimen was mentioned by Hermann von Meyer in 1832. He gave a figure of an undoubted elk-antler, said to be
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