APPENDIX. 733 



tinuously from palaeolithic down to the comparatively recent period 

 of its extinction here. Difference merely of size is not sufficient in 

 this case to establish a specific difference. The hones of more than 

 one specimen of this bird were found by two of my former pupils, 

 Mr. W. Bruce Clark and Mr. Randal Johnson of Pembroke College, 

 in a rubbish-pit at Wytham, near Oxford, mixed up with the 

 skeletons of three dogs, with bones of ox, pig, roe, horse, teal and 

 wild-swan, and with coarse culinary nail-marked and other British 

 pottery, by which the date of this ' find ' is fixed to the bronze age. 

 I have not met with any remains of this bird in any excavations 

 of an earlier date in this country; though it is difficult to think 

 that neolithic man would have neglected it as an article of diet 

 unless debarred by superstition from making use of it. 



The rabbit, Lepus cuniculus, finds a place in several catalogues 

 of British Prehistoric Mammalia; Mr. Pengelly, however, writing 

 of the discovery of the cave man at Mentone (Trans. Devon 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, vi. 1874, pp. 318, 

 801, 818 and 840), says that the discovery of its bones in that 

 deposit does ' not strengthen the evidence for its antiquity : J 

 though there is of course no doubt that the remains of this 

 animal, which still survives as a member of the fauna of North 

 Africa, form an essential and not merely an accidental constituent 

 in the quaternary deposits of Mediterranean caves (see Prof. Busk, 

 Zool. Trans, x. 2, p. 128), and though it is difficult to set aside 

 the evidence of their holding a similar relation to some of our 

 own caves. Professor Rogers, who in his ' History of Agriculture 

 and Prices in England ' has given us (vol. i. pp. 33, 65, 123, 340, 

 341, 583, vol. ii. 558-9 ^ records of the high prices paid for these 



1 In Daniel's 'Rural Sports/ 1801, vol. i. p. 347, there is the following statement: 

 ' In an account of the prices of provisions, &c. at the installation feast of Kalph de 

 Borne, abbot of St. Austin's, Canterbury, A. D. 1309 (contained in the fourth volume 

 of Dr. Henry's valuable History of Great Britain), we have among others the following 

 articles : 



s. d. 



600 rabbits 15 



Partridges, mallards, bitterns, larks . . 18 



200 pigs 500 



As partridges are here associated with other birds and no mention made of their 

 number, their price in these times cannot be ascertained, but a rabbit appears to have 

 been sold at the same price as a pig, viz. sixpence each. Their relative value has con- 

 siderably altered in the interval between that day and this/ 



I should not agree with the view put forward (I. c. 341) by my friend and former tutor 

 Professor Rogers, to the effect that rabbits when once introduced * would spread very 

 slowly over the country/ We have good natural history evidence, both direct and 

 analogical, for holding that starting even from a single centre, and as individuals 



