290 PALyEONTOLOGY. 



observed the differences of shape which the skull of a carnivorous 

 animal presents at different periods of life, he expresses himself with 

 philosophic caution on the nature and value of those differences. " How 

 far the fossils are of the same species among themselves, I cannot say. 

 The heads differ in shape from each other ; they are upon the whole 

 much longer for their breadth than in any carnivorous animal I know of. 

 They also differ from the present white bear, which, as far as I have 

 seen, has a common proportional breadth. It is supposed, indeed, that 

 the heads of the present white bear differ from each other. But the 

 truth of this assertion I have not seen heads enough of that animal to 

 determine." As, at present, my object is to illustrate the spirit in which 

 Hunter had entered upon this most interesting application of his anato- 

 mical science, I will merely request attention to the last-quoted remark 

 of Hunter, as explanatory of the reasons which led him to begin and 

 zealously cany on his accumulations of comparative osteology, and the 

 absolute necessity of possessing skulls of the same species of the different 

 sexes and at different ages, in order to fix our determination of pro- 

 blematic fossils on a secure basis. 



" Some of the fossil skulls," Hunter proceeds to remark, " when com- 

 pared with the recent white bear, would seem to have belonged to an 

 animal twice its size. But the varieties among the fossil bear's bones," 

 he affirms, " is not less than between these and the recent." The truth 

 of this remark is exemplified by the names Ursus spelceus, Ursus bombi- 

 frons, and Ursus jpriscus, applied by Cuvier and later palaeontologists to 

 the fossils described and figured by Hunter in the memoir of 1793, from 

 which I quote : in which it will be plainly seen that the observed 

 difference, due to age, in the shape of the skull of one and the same 

 species, is adduced as only one of the circumstances to be taken into 

 consideration in comparing recent and fossil crania, and that Hunter 

 by no means asserts, as Cuvier affirms 1 , "that the differences which 

 he had detected between the fossil and recent skulls, and between the 

 different fossil skulls of the cave bears, are of the same nature and degree." 



Having concluded his comparative remarks, and shown that the fossils 

 differed from the recent species known to him, and also differed from 

 each other, Hunter next briefly alludes to the different situations and 

 climates of the globe, to which animals are more or less confined. The 

 terms in which he expresses his general idea on this important topic are 

 peculiarly characteristic of his style and mode of thought. " Bones 

 of animals under circumstances so similar [i. e. as to their imbedding and 

 fossilization], although in different parts of the globe, one would have 



1 [Ossemens Fossiles, 8vo. ed. 1836, torn. vii. p. 236.] 



