LAGOMY SPELAUS, A) We} 
RODENTIA. LEPORID. 
Fig. 82. Fig. 84. 
Fossil, Nat. size. Kent’s Hole. 
LAGOMYS SPELASUS. Cave Pika. 
Tue fossil above figured possesses more than common 
interest. None of the circumstances attending its dis- 
covery, nor any character deducible from its colour or che- 
mical state, indicate it to be an older fossil than the jaws 
and teeth of the Hares, Rabbits, Field-voles, or Water- 
voles already described; yet it unquestionably attests the 
former existence in England of a species of Rodent, whose 
genus not only is unrepresented at the present day in our 
British Fauna, but has long ceased to exist in any part 
of the continent of Kurope. 
The sole evidence of the geographical range of the 
Pikas, or tail-less Hares, having ever extended to Hu- 
rope, has been in fact derived from fossil remains; and 
before natural history began to profit by the systematic 
study of such evidences, every other trace of the genus 
Lagomys had been so completely obliterated in Ku- 
rope, that Zoologists had not the slightest knowledge of 
such a form in the Rodent Order, until Pallas made his 
journey into Siberia, when he announced the existence 
of three species of the tail-less Hares as the most curious 
