118 



CHAPTER XVI. 



CAKNivoRA continued — bears. 



Ursid.*:. As already said, tlic place of the Bears in a natural arrangement has been the subject 

 of considerable difference of opinion. The resemblance of their plantigrade feet to the pedimanous 

 limbs of the Quadrumana, in virtue of which they have in most systems been placed at the head of 

 the Carnivoka, and immediately after the Monkeys, is, however, more of the nature of an analogy 

 than an indication of affinity, and, as was pointed out by Professor Owen in his paper on the 

 Classification of Mammals, their affinities are clearly greater with the Seals than with any of the 

 other Digitigrades. In particular, the resemblances in their renal and genital organs, the form of 

 their under jaw, and their broad flat foot, which is nearer to the flippers of the Seal than is the 

 more perfect retractUe-clawed, long and narrow hind foot of the feline quadruped.* 



On physiological grounds, therefore, the removal of the Beai's from the head of the Carnivora to 

 a position between the Badgers, Skitnks, Otters on the one hand, and the Seals on the other, seems 

 ax improvement. 



We have seen that the Amphicyo>; and other members of the dog-bear family lived in the 

 miocene epoch, and it is not improbable that they may have been the source whence the Bears were 

 derived. Like the Cave Lion and other boreal forms, whose development I attribute to the glacial 

 cold, the Bears themselves did not begin to appear until the pliocene epoch. During that 

 period they flourished in great numbers. One species, known as the Great Cave Bear (IT. spel.^us), 

 was especially abundant in Central Europe and South Russia. Some of the heads in the British 

 ^Museum are of very great dimensions, and show that it must have been an enormous beast, con- 

 siderably larger than the present Polar Bear. It and the Cave Hyasna (H. speltea) have also been 

 cited as found in the caveins of Tcharych and of Khankhara in the government of Tomsk in 

 Siberia. It has been thought that these identifications may require to be verified, for, according 

 to some palaeontologists, these species appear to have been absent in the vast region intermediate 

 between Germany and Northern Asia. As a very great part of this space was then under water, 

 there seems to be a verjr good apology for their absence. Remains of the Bear, however, are men- 

 tioned by Nilsson as fouiid in a gravel bed below a peat deposit in Scania. 



A small number of fossil remains of Bears, obtained from Spain, belong to a different species, 

 and one nearer the present Bear of the Pyrenees. 



The existing species are generally divided into two sections, the common Bears (Ursds), and the 

 Arboreal, or Sun Bears (Helarctos) ; but it is difficult to find good characters for this separation, 

 especially when wc come to the most nearly allied sjiiecics of each. The former extends all over 

 Europe, the north of Asia, North America, and the Cordilleras of the Andes. The latter is almost 



■* OWEIJ, in "Linn. Soo. Proc," ii. p. 32, 1857. 



