417 



covered at the house of Mr. Edward Fermon, of Forgney, 

 County Longford, on the borders of Westmeath, between 

 Moyvore and Ballymahon, the skull of an animal to him un- 

 known. This he lost no time in securing, and in the follow- 

 ing year obtained a second specimen, found in the same place, 

 in a cut away bog, about seven feet from the original sur- 

 face. These skulls were purchased by Mr. Baker, and are 

 the originals of which casts are by his desire presented to the 

 Academy, being duplicates of others given by him to the 

 University Museum, where are now to be found, through 

 the generosity of the Earl of Enniskillen, the East India 

 Company, and our Zoological Society, a very instructive 

 collection of the remains of bears, both fossil and recent. 



On the discovery by Mr. Underwood of the larger skull, 

 it was somewhat hastily announced as that of a great Irish 

 wolf-dog, and was published in the newspapers as such. 

 Under this impression, it was brought to Mr. Ball, who, with- 

 out hesitation, pronounced it to be that of a bear, which, on a 

 little further investigation, he considered to be the black bear 

 of Europe. Soon after, Mr. Baker, with laudable liberality, 

 purchasedboth specimens, andhas thus preserved evidence of the 

 existence of bears in Ireland, of which we had before no tangible 

 proof or historical evidence. Dr. Scouler, in a paper on extinct 

 animals of Ireland, published in the first volume of the Geo- 

 logical Journal, observes, that while bears still maintained 

 their ground in England, they were unknown in Ireland. 

 The venerable Bede states, the only ravenous animals of 

 Ireland were the wolf and fox. Giraldus makes no mention 

 of the bear, and St. Donatus, who died in 840, states it was 

 not a native, " ursorum rabies nulla est ibi," &c. 



The late Mr. Richardson, through whose kind interfer- 

 ence Mr. Ball obtained leave to make moulds of the skulls, 

 appears to have been in much doubt as to their nature. He 

 states (in his History of Dogs, p. 36) his opinion, that " they 

 are the remains of an extinct animal allied to, but by no means 



