192 
Silvester Gerald Barry, the learned chaplain of John, King of Eng- 
land, and popularly known by the name of ‘‘Giraldus Cambrensis,”’ 
owing to the circumstance of his Welsh origin, has enumerated in 
his ‘‘Topographia Hibernie”’ the different animals common to this 
country; but as he did not give the Irish names, we find some difficulty 
in using his description as a commentary upon the foregoing poem. 
The Rev. John K’Eogh, author of the ‘‘ Botanologia Universalis Hiber- 
niz,”’ also published, in 1739, ‘‘ Zoologia Medicalis Hiberniz,” in which 
he has given in the English character, and as they were pronounced by 
him, the Irish names of the ‘‘ birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, and insects 
which are commonly known and propagated in this kingdom;” but it 
is extremely defective as a list of animals, and far below the state of 
biological knowledge which then existed—being a mere enumeration of 
the various supposed cures and superstitious virtues attributed by old 
women, and old writers also, to the different parts and products of 
animals. 
Among the animals of extinct Irish Fauna which possibly existed con- 
temporaneously with man, but which have norepresentativesin the present 
day, was the bear, in Irish Wathghamhain (probably Ursus Arctos, orthefen 
bear), unmistakable evidence thereof having been already brought before 
the Academy by the late Dr. Ball,* and three casts of such bears’ crania 
being now, with the other unmanufactured animal remains, in our Mu- 
seum. Of these, it is said that two were found in a cut-away bog, about 
seven feet from the original surface, near Ballymahon, on the borders 
of Longford and Westmeath counties; but the hearsay or traditional 
evidence obtained by collectors of specimens, either of natural history 
or antiquity, as to the precise positions or strata in which such articles 
have been found by the peasantry, must be received with caution. 
Fig. 1. 
The fine specimen of cranium here figured, one-sixth the natural 
size, is 13} inches from the alveolar process to the end of the occipital 
spine, and was probably that of the European Ursus, or black bear. 
Dr. Carte considers it that of the Pyrenean species. It was found in the 
townland of Kilrathmurry, barony of Carbury, and county of Kildare, in 
cutting the new channel for the River Boyne, above Leinster Bridge, 
* For notices of the Irish Bear, see ‘‘ Proceedings,” vol. iv., p. 416. 
