20 TALPA. 
tions in various parts of England, but, with one ex- 
ception, they have not offered any specific difference from 
the Common Mole, Hedgehog, and Shrews, that exist at 
the present day in this country. 
With respect to the genus Talpa, those remaims which 
are mentioned by Dr. Buckland* as occurring with the 
bones of various birds, water-rats (Arvicole), in a bed of 
brown earth, at the bottom of the cave at Paviland, belong 
to the common existing species, and their presence in that 
almost inaccessible spot, is explained by Dr. Buckland on 
the supposition of their having been introduced by hawks 
and other birds of prey. It is most probable that the 
almost entire skull, and other portions of the skeleton de- 
scribed and figured by Dr. Schmerling,+ and by him identi- 
fied with the existing Mole, belonged to individuals whose 
introduction into the Belgian caverns is to be referred to a 
similar agency. And the remains of moles found in the 
soil covering the floor of the cavern at Kostritz, may be- 
long to an equally recent period. 
The nearly entire skull, lower jaw, and humerus, figured 
in cut 8, have a better claim to be regarded as fossils, al- 
though, in fact, not differmg from the recent species. 
The skull, a, from a raised beach near Plymouth, appears 
to have belonged to the same epoch as the fossil A/ustela 
subsequently to be described. 
In its size and general form, in the characteristic flatten- 
ing and elongation of the cranium, in the slenderness of 
the zygomatic arches, the extremities of which were still 
preserved in the fossil, and in the dentition of the upper 
Jaw, the correspondence with the recent Talpa communis is 
* Reliquie Diluviane, 4to., 1623, p. 93. 
+ Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles de Cayernes de Liége, 1833, p. 80, 
pl. v. 
