342 Batt—Fossil Mammalia of Ireland. 
A larger skull, mentioned by Sir William Wilde, measured 11 inches in length. 
The muscular attachments on the Irish skulls indicate more powerful muscles than 
do those of the German skull. The canines in the Irish skulls are more like those 
of the wolf than are those in the German skulls. The former, indeed, are in many 
respects very wolf-like, and perhaps are not even certainly distinguishable. They 
are now preserved in this Museum. 
In the Ballynamintra Cave, in addition to the bones referred to the wolf, as is 
mentioned elsewhere, Dr. Leith Adams has remarked upon specimens which he 
refers to a dog equal in size, and even taller than the wolf. This animal may have 
been domesticated by the hunters, who are believed to have split the Irish elk’s 
bones for the extraction of the marrow, and who manufactured the stone imple- 
ments, &c., which were found in the cave. These specimens are also now in 
this Museum. 
9.—SHEEP AND Goats. 
Ovis aries et Capra hircus. 
Dr. Leith Adams has expressed a strong opinion that the remains of sheep and 
goats, which have hitherto been found in Ireland, have all belonged to races intro- 
duced and domesticated by man. 
In the cave at Ballynamintra, county Waterford, numerous long bones, chiefly 
belonging to the feet, were plentiful ; these were all referable either to a small 
sheep or goat; but some of the toe bones found with them were so slender and 
cervine in appearance as to suggest their having belonged to the roebuck. It is 
thought that these bones were not older than the human remains in the same cave, 
and indeed one implement had been fashioned from the metatarsal of a sheep or 
goat. 
Bones of sheep and goats have been met with in crannoges and in the stone 
passages of ancient raths: although goats appear to have been the first to be intro- 
duced, there is evidence, according to Sir W. Wilde, that sheep reached Ireland 
before the Christian era. 
Several of the specimens of crania of sheep from Dunshaughlin, now in the 
Museum, indicate the existence of four-horned varieties, and one has jive well- 
preserved and distinct horn cores. Reports as to the existence of wild goats on 
the cliffs of the coast of Antrim in recent times appear to have originated from the 
fact that a few goats have been from time to time allowed to run wild on the 
Island of Rathlin. Such also is probably the origin of the small herds of wild 
goats now existing in parts of the west coast of Ireland and some of the islands 
off the mainland. 
