XV. Extract of a Letter from the Rev. Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, to the Rev. Dr. Lort, on some large Fossil Horns

Extract

Have lately purchased a pair of the largest fossil horns, I believe, ever found in Ireland, with some of the bones of that enormous race of deer which are dug up in the strata of marle that lye beneath our bogs. I do not find that they are discovered in the bogs themselves, but generally in the marle pits which are opened after the peat grass is removed, One of these horns measures from the root at its insertion in the scull to the tip of its remotest branch seven feet and one inch; the other six feet and nine inches; to which add the interval of four inches in the scull between their roots, and the distance from the tip of one horn to the tip of the other is fourteen feet four inches. The scull which is intire measures from the end to the vertebræ of the neck to the tip of the note twenty-three inches; the breadth of the forehead above the eyes is eleven inches and 1-fourth.