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‘about four feet under the surface,” but in what description of soil is not 
mentioned. ‘‘'The place where it was discovered had been a complete 
marsh, and scarcely accessible in summer. A large quantity of bones were 
found with the skall, which were broken up by the men’’ employed upon 
the work. It was presented to the Academy by the Board of Works. 
See ‘‘ Proceedings,” vol. v., Appendix, p. 54. Besides these two, we 
had in very early times the great cave bear, or Ursus speleus.* 
When the bear became extinct in Ireland we have no precise means 
of determining. Bede says the only ravenous animals in Ireland were 
the wolf and fox. St. Donatus, who died in A.D. 840, states, that in his 
time it was not a native; and Gerald Barry (Cambrensis) does not enu- 
merate it among the beasts known in Ireland at the period of his visit, 
in the twelfth century. In addition to the circumstance of the heads of 
several bears having been discovered, the fact of there being an Irish 
name for the animal in one of our old glossaries in the Library of Trinity 
College (M.S., H. 2, 13), strengthens the idea that it existed here con- 
temporaneously with man. The late William Thompson—decidedly our 
first Irish naturalist—wrote thus, in his Report on the Fauna of Ire- 
land, to the British Association, in 1840 :—‘‘I am not aware of any 
written evidence tending to show that the bear was ever indigenous in 
Ireland, but a tradition exists of its having been so; and it is associated 
with the wolf, asa native animal, in the stories handed down through 
several generations to the present time.”” History is, however, silent 
respecting it. According to Pennant, the brown bear infested the moun- 
tainous parts of Scotland up to the year 1057; and Professor Owen, in 
his ‘‘ History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds,” says, the most 
recent formations in England contain ‘‘remains which can scarcely be 
regarded as fossil, and which, if not perfectly identical with, indicate 
only a variety of the same species which is still common in many parts 
of the European continent.” 
The wolf, Canis lupus (the Cu-allaidh, or wild hound; and sometimes 
called Mac-Tire, filius terre, the son of the land), is so frequently 
referred to in modern Irish history, and existed so recently (up to 1710), 
that it is unnecessary to enter upon its description dt any length; 
moreover, its bones and crania are so identical with those of the dog of 
a Similar size, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the one from 
the other; even the observant Cuvier acknowledges that the difference 
between two dogs or two wolves of the same size were often more 
marked than between dog and wolf.+ In the vast collection of animal 
remains found on the site of the crannoge at Lagore (or Loch-Gabhar, the 
lake of the steeds), near Dunshaughlin, county of Meath, described at 
page 222 of the ‘‘ Catalogue of Antiquities,’ were found some heads of 
canine animals, either wolf or hound, of the lergest of which the accom- 
* See Journal of the Royal Dublin Society, No. 15, p. 352. 
+ See the account of the last wolf in Connaught, p. 143 of the Catalogue of Antiqui- 
ties, R.I.A. In the Brehon Laws, printed by Vallancey, pet wolves, pet hawks, pet deer, 
pet hogs, are mentioned. 
