A Discourse Concerning the Large Horns Frequently Found under Ground in Ireland, Concluding from Them that the Great American Deer, Call’d a Moose, was Formerly Common in that Island: With Remarks on Some Other Things Natural to that Country. –OR—Extinction, Geologic Time, the Great Flood, Oranges, and the Moose.

“That no real Species of Living Creatures is so utterly extinct, as to be lost entirely out of the World, since it was first Created, is the Opinion of many Naturalists; and ‘tis grounded on so good a Principle of Providence taking Care in general of all its Animal Productions, that it deserves our Assent.” 

Hmmmm.  Sorry, Dr. Molyneux, but that’s not exactly correct. 

Ostensibly this report from 1695 is a straightforward description of “the third Head…found by casual trenching in [an] Orchard… within the Compass of an Acre of Land… about four or five Feet under Ground, in a sort of Boggy Soil…measuring ten Foot ten inches from the tip of the right Horn, to the Root where it was fastened to the Head”.   Dr. Molyneux goes so far as to “have likewise added a Draught of a pair of common Stags Horns…all done according to the same Scale; that by this means, at one and the same time, may appear the grand disproportion between these sorts of Heads, and also the difference and agreement in their Shape”. 

However, unsatisfied with mere description, Dr. Molyneux proceeds to wrestle with the philosophical implications of such a find.   

While he ignores the possibility of the extinction of an entire species, Molyneux does embrace the possibility “that some entire Species of Animals, which have been formerly Common, nay, even numerous in certain Countries; have, in Process of time, been so perfectly lost, as to become there-utterly unknown… there remains among us not the least Record in Writing, or any manner of Tradition, that makes so much as mention of its Name”.

Considering potential causes of this extinction, Molyneux rejects the proposal that the moose, “like all other Animals might have been destroyed from off the Face of this Country by that Flood recorded in the Holy Scripture to have happened in the time of Noah; which I confess is a ready and short way to solve this Difficulty, but does not at all satisfy me; For (besides that there want not Arguments, and some of them not easily answer’d, against the Deluge being Universal)…we can’t well suppose they could by any means be preserv’d entire and uncorrupt from the Flood, now above Four Thousand Years since”.

Instead, Molyneux insightfully hypothesizes that “this kind of Animal might become extinct here from a certain ill Constitution of Air in some of the past Seasons long since the Flood” or that “as the Country became peopled, and thickly inhabited; they were soon destroy’d, and kill’d like other Venison as well for the sake of Food as Mastery and Diversion”.  While it is unclear to me whether humanity is in fact to blame for the extinction of the moose in Ireland, excessive hunting has been blamed for the extinction of the Australian mega-fauna during the Pleistocene era. 

Molyneux was equally insightful as he sought to explain how it was that these horns came to be buried at all.  He concludes that “Marle was only a Soil that had been formerly the Outward Surface of the Earth, but in process of Time, being covered by degrees with many Layers of Adventitious Earth… for of necessity we must allow the Place where these Heads are now found, was certainly once the external Superfice of the Ground; otherwise ‘tis hardly possible to suppose how they should come there”.  He even goes so far as to identify soil erosion from areas of higher elevation as the source for the material covering the horns. 

However, some of Molyneux’s suppositions appear less insightful than strange.  Observing the world around him, Molyneux supposes that there is “no small Affinity or Agreement in the Sprouting forth, and Branching of Deers Horns, with the way of Growth in Vegetables…this Analogy that Nature observes in casting the Horns of Beasts and dropping the Fruit of Trees, will appear much more evident to any one that will observe the end of a Stalk, from which a ripe Orange or any such large Fruit has been lately sever’d, and the Butt end of a cast Horn”.  

While we may scoff at some of his assertions, it is unclear to me that Molyneux would find us to be any less primitive.

“Or had those Barbarous Times been capable of taking Care for the Preservation of this stately Creature, our Country would not have entirely lost so singular and beautiful an Ornament: But this could not be expected from those Savage Ages of the World”.

Molyneux, T.  “A Discourse Concerning the Large Horns Frequently Found under Ground in Ireland, Concluding from Them that the Great American Deer, Call’d a Moose, was Formerly Common in that Island: With Remarks on Some Other Things Natural to that Country.”  Philosophical Transactions (1695) 19:489-512.

Roberts, R.  “New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago” Science (2001) 292: 1888-1892. 

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