132 



CANID^E. 



the Dog. Fig. 49 gives the natural size of this tooth in 

 the fossil Wolf of the Oreston cavern. Other more im- 

 portant points of concordance between the skull from 

 Kent's Hole, and those of the existing Wolf leave no rea- 

 sonable ground for doubting their specific identity ; and 

 the Naturalist who does not admit that the Dog and the 

 Wolf are of the same species, and who might be disposed 

 to question the reference of the British Fossils described 

 in the present section to the Wolf, must in that case resort 

 to the hypothesis, that there formerly existed in England 

 a wild variety of Dog having the low and contracted fore- 

 head of the Wolf, and which had become extinct before 

 the records of the human race. 



The conclusion, however, to which my comparison of the 

 fossil and recent bones of the large Canidee have led me is, 

 that the Wolves which our ancestors extirpated, were of 

 the same species as those which, at a much more remote 

 period, left their bones in the limestone caverns by the side 

 of the extinct Bears and Hyenas. 



Fig. 50. 



Surfac 



HigS water Spring tij. 



Section of the Caves at Oreston. 



