•98 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academi/. 



has been supposed, on account of its small size and dark colour, to 

 have belonged to the Ursus aretos ; but although smaller by a good deal 

 than the usual cranium of Ursus fossilis, it is equal to that of a Grisly 

 Bear, with which it is closely related in having a tricuspidated last 

 molar. 



Mr. Busk, F.E..S., referring to several of these crania in his Ee- 

 port on Buxham cave,^'' unhesitatingly places them with Ursus fossilis 

 sive Ursus fer ox fossilis, and, as far as I have seen, this is the only form 

 represented by the ursine remains hitherto reported from Ireland. 

 The absence of the Brown Bear, or rather of any cogent evidence of 

 the animal either in a fossil state or historically,^^ is noteworthy as 

 compared with the Brown Bear of Scotland and England. But the rela- 

 tionship between Ursus ferox and Ursus aretos is very close, not only as 

 regards the fossil but also the recent individuals ; so much is this the 

 case, that individuals are indistinguishable by external appearances ; 

 and as to their dentitions and osteologies, Mr. Busk shows in his very 

 exhaustive account of the Quaternary fauna of Gibraltar,^^ that the 

 ursine remains from Genista cave indicate that they belonged to a 

 Bear " closely related to Ursus fossilis sive priscus, or to a form inter- 

 mediate between it and the Urstis aretos var. isabellinus.''^ Indeed no 

 recent carnivore presents more well-marked varieties than the Ursus 

 aretos, as differentiated by external colouring, but the isabelline variety 

 of the Himalayas and Turkestan presents a more warty or porcine- 

 like grinding surface of its molars than is ordinarly observed in the 

 species elsewhere. This condition, I have no doubt, from extensive 

 observations of the above variety in its native haunts, is the result of 

 altered conditions -of life ; inasmuch as the isabelline Bear, unable 

 to capture the agile animals of the Alpine regions it frequents, is 

 driven to subsist almost entirely on roots of plants, and other vegetable 

 food ; hence its timidity as compared with the Ursus ferox, which still 

 continues to follow 'the Bison. 



How far the wider posterior nares in the Brown Bear, as compared 

 with Urstis ferox, and in particular Ursus spelmis, may be the result 

 of natural selection, giving a more extended surface for smell, on 

 which the recent Brown Bear depends almost entirely in discovering 

 the presence of his most deadly enemy, and also in supplying a con- 

 <lition favourable for free respiratory action, under the trying circum- 

 stances in which the animal is now placed, is a point on which it 

 seems to me one is free to speculate, when we come to consider the 

 severe struggles for existence to which an omnivorous plantigrade 

 like the tardy Bear has been subject to throughout the Tertiary Epoch. 



3S Philosophical Transactions, vol. clxiii., p. 632. 



s'' Bede, obiit 735, a. d., asserts that the Wolf and Fox vere the sole large car- 

 nivora of Ireland. St. Donatiis, obiit 840, a.u., writes '■'■ ursormn rabies nulla est 

 ibi ;'''' and Sylvester Jerald Barry does not mention the animal. 



38 Transactiotis of the Zoological Society, London, vol. x., p. 65. See also Allen, 

 ■0}}. bit., p. 334. 



