INTRODUCTION. 10ft 



among ossiferous debris, or are found under ques- 

 tionable circumstances ; as if the progress of man 

 Avith his flocks had been attended by wild and 

 domestic canines, and their presence in the west 

 was coeral.* 



With regard to foxes, their remains may be of a 

 somewhat older date ; but still they occur in the 

 tertiary series, though it is stated to be the older in 

 the Eocene of Lyell. Others were found in the 

 gypsum of the basin of Paris, and in the quarries of 

 Oeningen and Constance ; but burrowing animals 

 might be found below very ancient rocks, without 

 therefore positively fixing the period of their exist- 

 ence. It must, however, be admitted, that frag- 

 ments of jaAvs of foxes were found mixed in the 

 same red earth which contains bones of hyaenas, 

 horses, ruminants, elephants, &c. in the Oreston 

 and other caves near Plymouth. t 



* The species noticed by Baron Cuvier seem to have been 

 mere debris, from which, however, he was enabled to indicate 

 four, — the two first from the Franconian caverns, the last 

 from the calcariferous selenite of the vicinity of Paris ; they 

 were therefore of a coeval period with Paleotherium, and be- 

 long to an anterior zoology ; but their characters and distinc- 

 tions are not explicitly given. The two first mentioned, 

 however, belong to the latest period; one representing the 

 characters of a wolf, may be the same as that of the Torquay 

 deposit, the skull perhaps deserving the name of lurcher wolf; 

 and the other approaching the jackal, but larger than our 

 present foxes. 



+ The foregoing chapter was written before we became 

 aware of the review of Mammalia in the Edinburgh Journal 

 of Natural History, where many considerations relating to 



