14 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 
Ursus arctos.* Dr. Leith Adams, writing on ‘ Recent 
and Extinct Irish Mammals’ (‘‘Proc. Roy. Dublin 
Soc.,” 1878), has very fully described several skulls 
and other portions of ursine skeletons exhumed in 
Leitrim, Longford, Westmeath, King’s County, 
Kildare, Waterford, and Limerick, and after com- 
paring them with similar bones of Ursus speleus, 
U. fossilis, U. ferox, U. arctos, and U. maritimus, 
has arrived at the following conclusion :— 
“A study of the osteological characters of these 
ursine remains which represent all the authenticated 
instances of discoveries hitherto recorded from 
Ireland, appears to me to furnish characters referable 
only to one species, which, on the score of dimensions 
and general features, is inseparable from the so-called 
Ursus fossilis of Goldfuss,t and at all events from 
the smaller Spelean Bear found in English and other 
deposits, as distinguished from the larger congener 
found also in England, but more plentifully on the 
continent of Europe. Unless the skull from Kildare 
represents the Ursus arctos (and that, I think, is 
doubtful),t all the others seem to me to belong to 
* See Dr. R. Ball on the Skulls of Bears found in Ireland, “ Proc. 
Roy. Irish Acad.,” vol. iv. p. 416 (1850); Wilde, ‘ Proc. Roy. Irish 
Acad.,” vol. vii. p. 192 (1862); Scott, ‘Catalogue of Mammalian 
Fossils discovered in Ireland,’ “Jour. Geol. Soc. Dublin,” vol. x. p. 144 
(1864); Dr. Carte, “Jour. Geol. Soc. Dublin,” vol. x. p. 114 (1864). 
} The relationship between Ursus ferox and Ursus arctos is very 
close, not only as regards fossil but also recent individuals, so much 
so that by external appearance only they are mdistinguishable. 
{ A fine cranium 13} inches in length was found in cutting a new 
channel for the river Boyne, in the barony of Carberry, co. Kildare ; 
and is of peculiar interest from its resemblance to the Pyrenean 
variety of Ursus arctos, to which it has been referred by Dr. Carte. 
