118 FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



remains, into which, as our limits must prevent our following 

 him, we are forced to content ourselves with giving a brief view 

 of the discoveries which have been made, and shall consider 

 them under the head of each genus successively. We shall 

 begin with the 



Fossil Bears. 



The vast abundance of the bones of this animal in the 

 caverns of Germany, had long ago attracted the attention of 

 the curious, and many authors on the materia medica have 

 spoken of them under the title of the fossil unicorn. The 

 first truly osteological notice of them was given by J. Paterson 

 Hayn, in the *' Ephemerides of curious Matters in Nature,"*' 

 in 1672. He describes many of these bones, which he has 

 figured respectably enough, under the whimsical title of the 

 bones of dragons. Amongst his figures the humeri of two 

 species are distinguishable, half a pelvis, a portion of cranium, 

 one-half of the lower jaw, an axis, two other vertebrae, and 

 some bones of the metacarpus. These bones were found in 

 the first cavern of the Crapach mountains, not far from a con- 

 vent of the Chartreux, near the river Dunajek. The same 

 author mentions, in another place, some more bones found in a 

 cavern of Liptov, near the Rag river. 



In the same collection there is another notice of these bon6s 

 by H. VoUgnad, who also terms them the bones of dragons, 

 and even goes so far as to pretend that true dragons were then 

 to be found Kving and flying in Transylvania. There is, how- 

 ever, accompanying this notice, a good figure of an entire head 

 of our large species of bear, with the convex front. Vollgtiad 

 also gives two figures of unguical phalanges, but they belong 

 not to ursus, but felis. 



For near a century after we find nothing precise respecting 

 these remains, in an osteological view ; nothing, in fact, but 

 an occasional notice of their existence by some mineralogist or 

 describer of caverns. Some taken from the cave of Schartz- 

 fels are mentioned by Mylius ; Leibnitz, in his Protogaea, gives 



