ON BRITISH FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 63 



cate that the brown bear of Europe was a degenerate descendant of the same 

 species, as M. de Blainville has recently endeavoured to show. The diffi- 

 culties which oppose themselves to the view of the specific identity of the 

 great cave bear and the existing European bears, I shall point out after 

 noticing other localities in which the Ursus speleeus of Cuvier have been 

 found in this country. 



In the cave at Paviland, in the lofty limestone cliff facing the sea on the 

 coast of Glamorganshire, the following parts of a large species of bear are 

 enumerated by Dr. Buckland : — Many molar teeth, two canines ; the sym- 

 physial end of two lower jaws, exhibiting the sockets of the incisor teeth 

 and of the canines ; the latter are more than three inches deep ; a humerus 

 nearly entire ; many vertebrae, two ossa calcis; metacarpal and metatarsal 

 bones. 



At Oreston, on the coast of Devonshire, several caverns or cavernous fis- 

 sures were discovered during the quarrying of the limestone rock for the 

 construction of the breakwater at Plymouth. The first of these, described 

 in the Philosophical Transactions for 1817, contained the bones of a species 

 of Rhinoceros ; in the second, a smaller cavern distant one hundred and 

 twenty yards from the former, and described in the Philosophical Transac- 

 tions for 1821, were found, associated with the tooth of a rhinoceros and 

 parts of a deer, some teeth and bones of a large species of Ursus. 



The fossils referable to the bear here discovered, include a canine tooth, 

 left side, lower jaw ; a canine tooth, left side, upper jaw ; the penultimate 

 grinder, right side, upper jaw; the penultimate grinder, left side, lower jaw; 

 a portion of the sacrum ; portions of two tibiae ; a portion of the ulna ; a 

 portion of the femur. 



The richest cave-depository of the fossil bones of bears hitherto found in 

 England is that called Kent's Hole, near Torquay. The natural history, with 

 a special account of the organic riches of this cave, will be given in the se- 

 cond volume of the ' Reliquiae Diluvianae,' which Dr. Buckland is now pre- 

 paring for the press. It is to the assiduous researches of the late Rev. Mr. 

 Mac Enery that the discovery of the various and interesting fossils of this 

 cave is principally due, and some of the rarest and most valuable of this 

 gentleman's collection have been lately acquired by the British Museum. 

 Among the Ursine fossils meriting especial notice, are portions of the skull 

 and teeth of the Ursus spekeus, some of the latter equalling in size the 

 largest specimens from the German caverns. 



The anterior portion of a lower jaw, includiug the anchylosed symphysis, 

 with two enormous canines, is likewise remarkable from the circumstance of 

 its retaining a small and simple-fanged premolar in the interspace or dia- 

 stema between the canines and the double-fanged molars. 



A second interesting fossil is a large proportion of the lower jaw, in- 

 cluding the symphysis and the whole dental series of each ramus ; the sockets 

 of two small simple-fanged premolars are visible in the diastema above de- 

 scribed ; one close to the canine, the other, less completely preserved, near 

 the first double-fanged molar. 



Amongst the bones of the trunk and extremities there occur remarkable 

 examples of diseased action ; a lumbar vertebra, for example, presents ex- 

 tensive exostosis from the under part and sides of the body ; the distal 

 extremity of the radius exhibits an oblique fracture of that bone, in the 

 attempt to heal which a new and irregular ossific mass has been deposited 

 on the surface of the bone. Several bones and teeth of the Bear from 

 Kent's Hole exhibit very decided marks of having been gnawed, most pro- 

 bably by a hyaena. One of the fragments of the lower jaw of a young Bear 



