![]() Molyneux) “valued them so highly for their prodigious largeness” that he set them up in the horn gallery of Hampton Court, where they “so vastly exceed” all others in size “that the rest appear to lose much of their curiosity.” Nearly a century later, Charles II received a pair of antlers and (according to Dr. The first known drawing of giant deer antlers dates from 1588. They were called elk because the European moose (an “elk” to Englishmen) was the only familiar animal with antlers that even approached those of the giant deer in size. One story, probably apocryphal, tells of a huge bonfire made of their bones and antlers in County Antrim to celebrate the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. ![]() Before attracting the attention of scientists, they had been used as gateposts, and even as a temporary bridge to span a rivulet in County Tyrone. This figure seems all the more impressive when we recognize that the antlers were probably shed and regrown annually, as in all other true deer.įossil antlers of the giant deer have long been known in Ireland, where they occur in lake sediments underneath peat deposits. Reliable estimates of their total span range up to 12 feet. Although the Guinness book of world records ignores fossils and honours the American moose, the antlers of the Irish Elk have never been exceeded, or even approached, in the history of life. In 1842, Rathke described them in a language unexcelled for the expression of enormity as bewunderungswuerdig. ![]() Molyneux marvelled at “these spacious horns” in the first published description of 1697. Its enormous antlers were even more impressive. The Irish Elk was neither exclusively Irish, nor an elk. The English horn is a continental oboe the original versions were curved, hence “angular” (corrupted to English) horn. The Holy Roman Empire, Voltaire tells us, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. But they share the common distinction of their completely inappropriate names. The Irish Elk, the Holy Roman Empire, and the English horn form a strange ensemble indeed. Nature herself seems by the vast magnitude and stately horns, she has given this creature, to have singled it out as it were, and showed it such regard, with a design to distinguish it remarkably from the common herd of all other smaller quadrupeds. The extinct giant deer, for centuries the subject of argument between scientists and theologians, is an evolutionary symbol of nonviolence. Essays, Stephen Jay Gould, This View of Life
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