20 TALPA. 



tions in various parts of England, but, with one ex- 

 ception, they have not offered any specific difference from 

 the Common Mole, Hedgehog, and Shrews, that exist at 

 the present day in this country. 



With respect to the genus Talpa, those remains which 

 are mentioned by Dr. Buckland* as occurring with the 

 bones of various birds, water-rats (Armcolee), in a bed of 

 brown earth, at the bottom of the cave at Paviland, belong 

 to the common existing species, and their presence in that 

 almost inaccessible spot, is explained by Dr. Buckland on 

 the supposition of their having been introduced by hawks 

 and other birds of prey. It is most probable that the 

 almost entire skull, and other portions of the skeleton de- 

 scribed and figured by Dr. Schmerling,f and by him identi- 

 fied with the existing Mole, belonged to individuals whose 

 introduction into the Belgian caverns is to be referred to a 

 similar agency. And the remains of moles found in the 

 soil covering the floor of the cavern at Kostritz, may be- 

 long to an equally recent period. 



The nearly entire skull, lower jaw, and humerus, figured 

 in cut 8, have a better claim to be regarded as fossils, al- 

 though, in fact, not differing from the recent species. 



The skull, #, from a raised beach near Plymouth, appears 

 to have belonged to the same epoch as the fossil Mustela 

 subsequently to be described. 



In its size and general form, in the characteristic flatten- 

 ing and elongation of the cranium, in the slenderness of 

 the zygomatic arches, the extremities of which were still 

 preserved in the fossil, and in the dentition of the upper 

 jaw, the correspondence with the recent Talpa communis is 



* Reliquiae Diluvianee, 4to., 1823, p. 93. 



f* Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles de Cavernes de Liege, 1833, p. 80, 

 pi. v. 



