URSUS. Gh 
CARNIVORA., URSIDE. 
uRSUS ARCTOS, + Nat. size, Fens, Cambridgeshire. 
Genus, URSUS. 
Ursus Arctos. Owen, Report on Brit. Association, 1842. 
Morris, Brit. Fossils, 8vo, 1843, p. 214. 
°° 
As the order Carnivora includes the most noxious and dan- 
gerous quadrupeds, and those which most oppose themselves 
to the profitable domestication of the useful herbivorous 
species, it has suffered the greatest diminution through 
the hostility of man, wherever the arts of civilization, and 
especially those of agriculture, have made progress. 
At the present day the three families of the Carnivorous 
Order, which include the largest and most formidable of 
the beasts of prey, have been so reduced, that they are 
severally represented in Great Britain in a wild state, by a 
single species of diminutive size. Of the Canidae, or Dog- 
tribe, the Fox alone retains its primitive freedom and pre- 
daceous habits of life: the Wild-cat still lmgers in remote 
mountain thickets, as the type of the Melide; and the 
harmless Badger is the sole representative, in our present 
indigenous Zoology, of the Urside, or Beavr-tribe. 
