LAGOMY SPELA;US. 



213 



RODENTIA. 



Fig. 82. 



Fig. 83. 



LEPORIDJE. 



Fig. 84. 



Fossil, Nat. size. Kent's Hole. 



LAGOMYS SPEL^EUS. Cave Pika. 



THE fossil above figured possesses more than common 

 interest. None of the circumstances attending its dis- 

 covery, nor any character deducible from its colour or che- 

 mical state, indicate it to be an older fossil than the jaws 

 and teeth of the Hares, Babbits, Field-voles, or Water- 

 voles already described ; yet it unquestionably attests the 

 former existence in England of a species of Rodent, whose 

 genus not only is unrepresented at the present day in our 

 British Fauna, but has long ceased to exist in any part 

 of the continent of Europe. 



The sole evidence of the geographical range of the 

 Pikas, or tail-less Hares, having ever extended to Eu- 

 rope, has been in fact derived from fossil remains; and 

 before natural history began to profit by the systematic 

 study of such evidences, every other trace of the genus 

 Lagomys had been so completely obliterated in Eu- 

 rope, that Zoologists had not the slightest knowledge of 

 such a form in the Rodent Order, until Pallas made his 

 journey into Siberia, when he announced the existence 

 of three species of the tail-less Hares as the most curious 



