54 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



opinion that the Irish Bear was more like the American Grizzly; and certainly, 

 as far as size is concerned, the former attained quite the dimensions of its 

 American relation. Some authorities 1 look upon the American Grizzly Bear 

 as a large form of the Brown Bear, and I concur in this view. 



Owing to the great size of the Irish Bear, some authorities connected it with 

 the Great Cave Bear ( Un but this view is not admissible, for its 



dental characters agree with those of the Brown Bear. Some of the lower 

 anterior premolars were always present in the jaws found in the Castlepook 

 Cave, while the fourth premolars, which are so characteristic, were always of 

 the Ursus aretos type, and the second molars were well constricted posteriorly. 



Some of the bones were perfectly fresh- looking, as if the Bears had been 

 living in the neighbourhood of the cave a few years ago; others were deeply 

 embedded in Btalagmite or greatly discoloured and blackened by mineral 

 infiltration. A great many of the bones bad been gnawed by a large 

 carnivore, probably the Hyena. Sometimes both ends of a femur or humerus 

 were completely eaten away. The ulnae were almost all preserved intact, as 

 they proved to l>e too bard a morsel even for a llyana. 



In the Kesh caves 5 1 found a three-rooted molar tooth of a Bear which I 

 figured, since it- specific identification had proved the object of a good deal 

 of speculation. In the Castlepook Cave two similar teeth were discovered, 

 both of them with three toots. As these were in company with a milk 

 premolar, it is almost certain that the problematical tooth from the Kesh 

 the tirst milk molar "i" the Brown Hear, which was hitherto unknown, 

 becau- bed either during or shortly after birth. 



ws Rat (Rp ■ Miu deeumatms). 



The rat remain- were very scarce, and they mostly belonged to young 

 individuals. Altogether the bones did not represent more than four rats. 

 They agreed with the Common Bat, and were all quite recent in appearance, 

 and evidently intruded through rabbit burrows. 



Field Mousi a U 



Some ot the bones and teeth were modern-looking. Most of them had 

 I y appearance of antiquity, and resembled those of the Lemming, \\ ith which 



they often occurred in the same deposit — at least iu the sand thrown out of 



the cave, which was subsequently riddled. 



1 Reynolds, S. H : The Bears. " British Pleistocene Mammalia," vol. ii, pt. 2, p. 32. 

 Palaeontographical Soc 1906. 



" The Exploration of the Caves of Kt-sh." Trans. K. I. Acad., vol. ixxii (Sect. B), 

 pt. 4. 1903. 



