On the Recent and Extinct Irish Mammals. 51 
I, URSINE REMAINS FROM LEITRIM. 
I am indebted to the Earl of Enniskillen for the following infor- 
mation relating to the superb cranium of a bear now in his pos- 
session. His Lordship writes—“ It was given to me by Surgeon 
Young, of Monaghan, who told me that he had received it when in 
the County of Leitrim from a navvy who gave it to him out of 
gratitude for curing him of a severe illness. The navvy told him 
that he found it near to Ballinamore, in that county, when em- 
ployed in digging out the Shannon and Erne Canal.” 
The specimen, a crown and palate view of which is shown in 
Plate ITI, figs. 1 and 2, along with similar views, figs 3 and 4, 
of the cranium of Ursus ferox from Montana, United States. 
The specimen in question presents the bleached outward 
appearance of bones from the shell marl and sub-turbary deposits. 
It is the largest cranium of all ursine exuvie hitherto recorded 
from Ireland, and evidently belonged to a full-grown male. The 
mandible is wanting, and only the canines and ultimate molars 
are in place. The length of the former from tip to alveolus is 48 
millimetres, and 32 millimetres in the anteroposterior diameter, 
the maximum breadth being 19 millimetres. 
These teeth are larger than the majority of specimens of Ursus 
fossilis of Goldfuss, and greatly exceed any of the canines of 
recent species with which I have been enabled to compare them. 
But the configuration of canines differs considerably in individuals 
of the same species, and, therefore, their form cannot be relied on, 
as diagnostic of any one species. The ultimate molar is some- 
what compressed posteriorly, the same tooth in the Ursus arctos 
and Ursus ferox being not so much contracted, but there is indivi- 
dual variability again in the latter particular. Its dimensions 
are excessive as compared with the Ursus fossilis and U. ferox, and 
U. arctos, being 42 x 22 millimetres, which equal the dimensions 
of individuals of the gigantic cave bear, although not so large as 
the mean of specimens recorded by Busk.* 
Indeed, as regards dimensions, the skull from Leitrim far ex- 
ceeds any other Irish crania as seen in the Table, page 64—or indeed 
any skulls of Ursus ferox or Ursus arctos with which I have been 
enabled to compare it. It equals the generality of crania of the 
* Report on the Explorations of Brixham Cave, Phil. Trans., vol. clxiii., p. 532. 
Scien. Proc. R.D.S., Vou. u., Pr. 1. B2 
