7ie20 species of British Bear. 491 



al)ove tlic upper sui-race of the ON-forcl VMiy, upon which tlic 

 gravel rests. 



The hicality is one where bones have been accumulated in 

 flood-debris at a drinking-place where the Cherwell stream 

 ran clear over a gravel bottom (c/. A. IJ. Church, ^ Botanical 

 IMemoir,' no. 13, p. 22). Many of them have been pene- 

 trated by the roots of the fine elms of Magdalen Grove, one 

 of which, the largest of its kind in Britain, probably owed 

 its gigantic size to the phosphates derived from mammoths' 

 bones. 



lu February 1922, after many bones from the pit 

 liad already been broken up for gravelling a walk leading 

 to the new kitchen-garden, 1 was able to save a fairly 

 large portion of a mammoth tusk and several molars; but, 

 not realising how annihilating the pickaxe of a really 

 competent digger of gravel can be, I had formed the opinion 

 that in this deposit the bones had for the most part dis- 

 integrated, and that teeth only had survived. On the 31st 

 of January last, on bearing that bones had been found, 

 1 immediately rushed out, arriving, however, too late to see 

 the remains in situ, and found a pile of what appear to be 

 bones of a Bus primigenius, stag's horn fragments, many 

 bits of mammoth bones, including paits of two lower jaws 

 and teeth, and, on the top of all, a beautifully preserved 

 ramus, in two pieces, of the lower jaw of a bear. It is in 

 a good state of preservation : only the coronoid process and 

 the incisors being missing (PI. II. fig. 2). 



My friend. Dr. Andrews, of the British Museum, who has 

 superintended the repairing, has given me every facility to 

 examine the jaws of the British Bears in his charge, and, in 

 tiie kindest way, has informed me as to the recent literature 

 on the subject. Mr. Plinton has also given me access to the 

 bear-skulls in the Zoological Department. 



Such of the literature on fossil bears as I have been able 

 to review seems to show that the great range of variation 

 in the characters of the Common Brown Bear, Ursus arctoSy 

 has caused some writers to include within its limits not 

 only the Grizzly Bear of North America, but also a great 

 number of fragmentary fossilised remains from deposits of 

 different ages. 



Owen, for instance, in his ' British Fossil ^lammals ' 

 included a newly-found Fen Bear in the same species in 

 18-16, and his example has been followed by many authors, 

 including Reynolds, in his ^Monograph on the British 

 Pleistocene Bears,' 1906. 



The Magdalen College bear-jaw exhibits chai-acters which 



