IN'TRODUCTION, XXV 
destruction on the feebler quadrupeds. A savage Bear, 
surpassing in size the Ursus ferox of the Rocky Mountains, 
found its hiding-place, like the Hyzna, in many of the 
existing limestone caverns of England. With the Ursus 
speleus was associated another Bear, more like the com- 
mon European species, but larger than the present indivi- 
duals of the Ursus Arctos. Wolves and Foxes, the 
Badger, the Otter, the Foumart, and the Stoat, complete 
the category of the known pliocene Carnivora of Britain. 
Bats, Moles, and Shrews, were then, as now, the forms 
that preyed upon the insect world in this island. Good 
evidence of a fossil Hedgehog has not yet been obtained ; 
but remains of an extinct Insectivore of equal size, and 
with closer affinities to the Mole-tribe, have been discovered 
in a pliocene formation in Norfolk. Two kinds of Beaver, 
Hares and Rabbits, Water-voles and Field-voles, Rats 
and Mice, richly represented the Rodent Order. The 
greater Beaver (Zrogontherium) and the Tail-less Hare (La- 
gomys) were the only subgeneric forms, perhaps the only 
species, of the pliocene Glires that have not been recog- 
nised as existing in Britain within the historic period. 
The newer tertiary seas were tenanted by Cetacea, either 
generically or specifically identical with those that are 
now taken or cast upon our shores. 
In the subsequent pages of this work will be found the 
details of the various kinds of evidence which coneur to 
prove that the Mammalia just enumerated actually lived, 
generation after generation, for a long succession of years, in 
the land that now constitutes Great Britain. It may be 
sufficient, here, to adduce one fact, derived from the pecu- 
liar economy of the Deer-tribe, which rebuts the notion 
that the fossil remains of extinct species have belonged to 
carcases of drowned animals drifted from a distance. 
