APPENDIX. 735 



lations of the Mnstelida to the Rodentia generally, are expressed 

 accurately in the Batrachomyomachia, 51-52 : 

 TrXetaro^ 6r) yaXerjv 7repi8t6ia TJTLS 

 f/ H KOL Tptoy \obvvovT a Kara rpu>y\riv 



The bones of water-rats, Arvicola ampAibius, I have found lying 

 in great quantities in a barrow together with a few remains of 

 the polecat, Mustela pwtorius, which latter animal had used the 

 place as a lair and probably nest for a considerable period. The 

 upper and lower jaws of the water-rats had been left intact, their 

 strong teeth, which should have prevented what I am well assured 

 were similar remains in other barrows from being spoken of as ' rats ' 

 bones, having been found over-resistent by their destroyers, who 

 had however, with the characteristic instinct of their genus, never 

 spared the brain-containing calvaria3. 



The dog has only rarely been met with in British interments 

 either of the stone or of the bronze age, a circumstance worthy 

 of note when we recollect how very commonly the dog has in all 

 countries kept his master or mistress company in the tomb as 

 faithfully as during life. One instance however of such an inter- 

 ment I noted and have described (Journal Anth. Inst., v. p. 157; 

 see p. 517 supra) in the neolithic barrow at Eyford ; the dog had 

 undoubtedly been buried together with a woman, whose skeleton 

 was, like that of the dog, still partly in situ. The characters of the 

 dog's skeleton, like those of many other objects found even in in- 

 terments most undoubtedly of the stone- and bone-age, are such as, 

 irrespective of any reference to what we know of palaeolithic times, 

 to impress upon us the conviction that the men even of those far- 

 off days had yet been preceded by many generations who had made 

 weapons and domesticated animals. This dog bears no resemblance 

 to the wolf-like Esquimaux dog on the one side, nor to any such 

 small terrier-like breed on the other, as might suggest that it 

 represents a lately domesticated jackal. It may be conveniently 

 spoken of, as Riitimeyer (Fauna der Pfahlbauten, p. 118) does 

 speak of the dog, similarly rare in the relics from the Swiss lake- 

 dwellings, as a 'middle sized' dog, * einen Hand von mittlerer 



words of Varro (iii. 12), ' Et quod in Hispania annis ita fuisti multis ut inde te 

 cuniculos persecutes credam/ by supposing them to show that the writer held that all 

 rabbits in Italy had been imported from Spain. For a disquisition on the history of 

 the rabbit, see Houghton, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 1869, iv. Ser., vol. xv. p. 179. 

 For one on that of the martens, see Cambridge Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, 

 1868, pp. 47, 62, 437, 438, where the historical relations of these animals to the 

 rabbit, and also to the felts catus, are considered. 



