234 Miscellaneous. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Notice of Powerful Bears, probably cocEval with the Great Fossil 

 Deer of Ireland. 



[From Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Dec. 10, 1849.] 



Mr. Ball, on the part of Abraham Whyte Baker, sen., Esq., of 

 Ballaghtobin, a member of the Academy, and one who has always 

 endeavoured to promote its objects, presented accurate casts of two 

 bear skulls found in the county of Westmeath. The following is a 

 summary of the information Mr. Ball has been able to obtain relative 

 to these very interesting relics of a powerful species long extinct in 

 this island. Mr. Underwood, the well-known and industrious col- 

 lector of antiquities, who has rescued from destruction many of the 

 best specimens of human art now in the Academy's museum, being 

 in 1846 on one of his tours through the country, discovered at the 

 house of Mr. Edward Fermon, of Forgney, County Longford, on the 

 borders of Westmeath, between Moyvore and Ballymahon, the skull 

 of an animal to him unknown. This he lost no time in securing, and 

 in the following year obtained a second specimen, found in the same 

 place, in a cut-away bog, about seven feet from the original surface. 

 These skulls were purchased by Mr. Baker, and are the originals of 

 which casts are by his desire presented to the Academy, being du- 

 plicates of others given by him to the University Museum, where are 

 now to be found, through the generosity of the Earl of Enniskillen, 

 the East India Company, and our Zoological Society, a very instruct- 

 ive collection of the remains of bears, both fossil and recent. 



On the discovery by Mr. Underwood of the larger skull, it was 

 somewhat hastily announced as that of a great Irish wolf-dog, and 

 was published in the newspapers as such. Under this impression it 

 was brought to Mr. Ball, who, without hesitation, pronounced it to 

 be that of a bear, which, on a little further investigation, he consi- 

 dered to be the black bear of Europe. Soon after, Mr. Baker, with 

 laudable liberality, purchased both specimens, and has thus preserv^ed 

 evidence of the existence of bears in Ireland, of which we had before 

 no tangible proof or historical evidence. Dr. Scouler, in a paper on 

 extinct animals of Ireland, published in the first volume of the Geo- 

 logical Transactions, observes, that while bears still maintained their 

 ground in England, they were unknown in Ireland. The Venerable 

 Bede states, tlie only ravenous animals of Ireland were the wolf and 

 fox. Giraldus makes no mention of the bear ; and St. Donatus, who 

 died in 840, states it was not a native, " ursorum rabies nulla est 

 ibi," &c. 



The late Mr. Richardson, through whose kind interference Mr. 

 Ball obtained leave to make moulds of the skulls, appears to have 

 been in much doubt as to their nature. He states (in his History of 

 Dogs, p. 36) his opinion, that " they are the remains of an extinct 

 animal allied to, but by no means identical with, the dog ; and an 

 animal with which we are now unacquainted, partaking somewhat of 

 the characteristics of the bears, and perhaps, also, of the hysenas." 



