﻿ursus. 5 



three species in respect of the teeth. He returned to the subject four years later 

 in his 'Report on the Ancient or Quaternary Fauna of Gibraltar,' 1 in which he 

 discussed minutely the characters of the cave, brown, and grizzly bears as based 

 upon their teeth, stating his belief that no character of specific importance could 

 be drawn from any part of the bear's skeleton except the teeth. 



The question of the relationship of the fossil bears was further considered by 

 R. Hensel 3 (1876). Basing his view on a study of the teeth, he urged the distinc- 

 tion of the cave bear, but did not express a clear opinion as to whether the other 

 Pleistocene bears represented more than one species. In 1877 Boyd Dawkins, 3 

 who had already" 1 commented on the extreme difficulty of distinguishing between 

 the brown and grizzly bears by means of their hard parts, adopted the view 

 of their identity. 



About this time A. L. Adams commenced a series of important papers in which 

 he discussed the Irish specimens. In the earliest 5 of these (1878) he referred the 

 specimen described by Carte as TJ. maritimus to TJ. ferox, and in the second 6 he 

 gave a critical account of all the Irish bear-remains, referring them all to TJ. ferox, 

 the grizzly bear, which he concluded was the only bear whose remains had been 

 proved to occur in Ireland. In a later paper 7 the same author, in describing- 

 further remains of Irish bears, was the first to suggest that those known as TJ. 

 spelxits might be only those of large individuals of TJ. ferox. He confirmed Busk's 

 and his own previously expressed opinion, that all the remains of Irish bears were 

 referable to JJ. ferox. The paper included a table of dimensions of bears' crania. 

 The following year (1881) Adams published another paper 8 further developing his 

 suggestion that the differences between fossil bear-remains may be racial, sexual, 

 or even individual, dependent on mode of life or character of food, and that the 

 different British fossil bears may best be regarded as races of one species. 



Later writers have also discussed fully the mutual relationship of the bears, and 

 very varying opinions have been reached. 



Lydekker, a writing in 18S4, gave dental characters by which the brown and 

 grizzly bears might be distinguished, but a year later doubted 10 whether a valid 

 distinction of this kind was possible. In 1897 he separated u TJ. spelseus as a 

 species, grouping all the bears of the arctos group (i. e. all those of the northern 



1 ' Trans. Zool. Soc.,' x (2), 1877, p. 60. 3 ' Sitzb. Naturf. Freimde, Berlin,' p. 49. 



3 ' Q. J. Geol. Soc.,' xxxiii, 1877, p. 598. * Ibid., xxxii, 1876, p. 248. 



5 'Proc. E. Irish Acad.,' 2nd series, iii, 1878, p. 94. 



6 ' Journ. E. Geol. Soc. Ireland,' iv, 1877, p. 247. 



7 ' Sci. Proc. E. Dublin Soc.,' ii, 1880, p. 49. 



8 'Trans. Eoy. Dublin Soc' (2), i, 1881, p. 201. 



9 'Palaeont. Indica,' ser. 10, ii, 1884, p. 202. 



10 'Cat. Foss. Mainm. Brit. Mus.,' pt. i, p. 173. 



11 ' Proc. Zool. Soc.,' 1897, p. 412. 



