132 CANID A. 
the Dog. Fig. 49 gives the natural size of this tooth in 
the fossil Wolf of the Oreston cavern. Other more im- 
portant pomts of concordance between the skull from 
Kent’s Hole, and those of the existing Wolf leave no rea- 
sonable ground for doubting their specific identity ; and 
the Naturalist who does not admit that the Dog and the 
Wolf are of the same species, and who might be disposed 
to question the reference of the British Fossils described 
in the present section to the Wolf, must in that case resort 
to the hypothesis, that there formerly existed in England ~ 
a wild variety of Dog having the low and contracted fore- 
head of the Wolf, and which had become extinct before 
the records of the human race. 
The conclusion, however, to which my comparison of the 
fossil and recent bones of the large Canidae have led me is, 
that the Wolves which our ancestors extirpated, were of 
the same species as those which, at a much more remote 
period, left their bones in the limestone caverns by the side 
of the extinct Bears and Hyeenas. 
Fig. 50. 
i 
Surface of the Country. | 
UMMM UMM MMMM MMM COLUM. Le 
the ground at the Poot of the Rock. | 
High water Sprig tide. 
Section of the Caves at Oreston. 
