﻿MONOGRAPH 



THE BRITISH MAMMALIA 



PLEISTOCENE PERIOD 



THE BEARS. 



Order-CARNIVORA. 

 Family— URSIDJE. 



Genus — Ursus. 



I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



The fossil bears form a group of animals whose study is by no means easy, 

 not from any scarcity of their remains, but from the difficulty of coming to a 

 decision about the mutual relationship of the various living and fossil forms. 

 Very divergent opinions have been expressed with regard to the number of species 

 of bears, and the literature dealing with the subject is remarkably extensive. 

 Cuvier 1 and de Blainville 3 treat of the early discoveries of fossil bears very fully, 

 and their accounts have been freely used in the following pages. 



Fossil bones, which eventually proved to be those of bears, were first mentioned 

 by J. Paterson Hayn 3 (1672), who considered them to be the bones of dragons. 

 He obtained representatives of nearly all parts of the skeleton from a cave in 

 Mount Krapacks, Hungary. H. Vollgnad 4 (1673) referred to the same bones, 

 again considering them to be the remains of dragons. 



1 ' Oss. Foss.,' ed. 1, 1812, torn, iv, part iv. 2 ' Osteograplvie,' torn, ii, K. 



3 ' Ephem. Curieux de la Nature,' dec. i, an. iii, obs. cxxxix, p. 220. 



i Ibid., an. iv, obs. clxx, p. 226. 



1 



