INTRODUCTION. XXV 



destruction on the feebler quadrupeds. A savage Bear, 

 surpassing in size the Ursus ferox of the Rocky Mountains, 

 found its hiding-place, like the Hysena, in many of the 

 existing limestone caverns of England. With the Ursus 

 spelaus was associated another Bear, more like the com- 

 mon European species, but larger than the present indivi- 

 duals of the Ursus Arctos. Wolves and Foxes, the 

 Badger, the Otter, the Foumart, and the Stoat, complete 

 the category of the known pliocene Carnivora of Britain. 



Bats, Moles, and Shrews, were then, as now, the forms 

 that preyed upon the insect world in this island. Good 

 evidence of a fossil Hedgehog has not yet been obtained ; 

 but remains of an extinct Insectivore of equal size, and 

 with closer affinities to the Mole-tribe, have been discovered 

 in a pliocene formation in Norfolk. Two kinds of Beaver, 

 Hares and Babbits, Water-voles and Field-voles, Rats 

 and Mice, richly represented the Rodent Order. The 

 greater Beaver (Trogontlierlum) and the Tail-less Hare (La- 

 gomys) were the only subgeneric forms, perhaps the only 

 species, of the pliocene Glires that have not been recog- 

 nised as existing in Britain within the historic period. 

 The newer tertiary seas were tenanted by Cetacea, either 

 generically or specifically identical with those that are 

 now taken or cast upon our shores. 



In the subsequent pages of this work will be found the 

 details of the various kinds of evidence which concur to 

 prove that the Mammalia just enumerated actually lived, 

 generation after generation, for a long succession of years, in 

 the land that now constitutes Great Britain. It may be 

 sufficient, here, to adduce one fact, derived from the pecu- 

 liar economy of the Deer-tribe, which rebuts the notion 

 that the fossil remains of extinct species have belonged to 

 carcases of drowned animals drifted from a distance. 



