240 The Carnivora. 
inches between their points and the lower teeth when the 
mouth was wide open; but it is not impossible that they were 
used like tusks for striking a terrible downward blow, to 
which their shape would well adapt them. A fine cranium of 
one species, M. Latidens, from the La Plata, is to be seen in 
Wall-case, No. 1 (south side), in the geological collection at 
the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, with these 
teeth well preserved; and in the same gallery most of the 
fossil carnivora to be subsequently mentioned are represented. 
There seems little reason to doubt that the man of the paleo- 
lithic period may have been familiar with this feline monster, 
and also with the great cave bear, Ursus speleus; the cave 
lion, Felis spelea; and the cave hyena, Hyena spelea. The 
bear was as formidable as the existing “grizzly” of America, 
the lion of larger proportions than’ either the Asiatic or 
African species of our time, and the hyena on a larger scale 
than existing species. In all the principal caverns the pre- 
sence of the hyena may be distinctly traced by the bones of 
herbivora gnawed in a manner characteristic of his living 
congeners, and by his own remains. The wolverine, or glutton 
now an Arctic species, extended into central France, and 
smaller species, such as the otter, weasel, &c., were represented 
in Meiocene times. Species of Canis, too, appear in the 
gypsum of Montmartre, showing that this form was early 
differentiated; while a wolf, closely similar to Canis lupus of 
our time, has been found in the Cromer forest-bed, associated 
with extinct proboscideans. 
Inasmuch as this forest-bed is certainly pre-glacial, the 
lupine form was already in being, at least as early as, and 
even anterior to, the period at which the human race had 
become so far differentiated from its ancestral form as to be 
entitled to claim the rank of Man. We cannot know whether 
the men of the drift period domesticated it; but this may be 
assumed with some confidence, that, surrounded as they were 
by ferocious carnivora, and living solely by the chase, beings 
intelligent enough to manufacture stone weapons would not 
