112 



DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



THE BROWN BEAR 



Few of us can have imagined the possibility of en- 

 countering a Brown Bear in the forest glades of Britain, 

 yet our forerunners in the land frequently enjoyed that 

 experience in the far-off days when 



In yon withered bracken's lair 

 Slumbered the wolf and shaggy bear. 



At the present day in Europe the Brown Bear (Ursus 

 arctos) (Figs. 26 and 27) is mainly confined to the 

 forests of Scandinavia, Russia, Hungary and the Pyrenees, 

 but in former days it was a common inhabitant of Great 

 Britain and Ireland. In Scotland, where it lingered longest, 



Fig. 26. Skull of Brown Bear from peat-moss in Dumfriesshire. \ nat. size. 



it ranged over the whole land from Dumfriesshire, where 

 many years ago a well preserved skull and a rib were found 

 in a peat moss at Shaws, to Sutherland and Caithness. The 

 only direct evidence of its association with man in North 

 Britain is afforded by the discovery of a tooth in a broch 

 at Keiss, for the canine tooth found in the bone cave near 

 Inchnadamph in Sutherlandshire lay in a deposit lower than 

 that containing traces of the presence of man. Yet in York- 

 shire the Neolithic cave-dwellers of Settle considered the 

 flesh of the Bear a suitable article of food, and its presence, 

 as late as Roman times, is indicated by bones found in 

 refuse-heaps at Richmond in Yorkshire, at Colchester in 

 Essex, and even so far south as London, as well as by the 

 discovery in the Roman camp of Cilurnum or Chesters on 



