﻿MONOGRAPH 



THE BRITISH MAMMALIA 



PLEISTOCENE PERIOD 



THE CANID^. 



Order-CARNIVORA. 



Family— CANHLE. 



Genus — Canis. 



I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



At the commencement of a previous memoir dealing with the Pleistocene l bears 

 reference was made to the difficulty which the study of those animals presented 

 owing to the practical impossibility of coming to a satisfactory conclusion with 

 regard to the mutual relationship of the various species and varieties. That diffi- 

 culty presents itself in perhaps an even more marked form in the case of the Canidge. 



The earliest reference to the existence of fossil Caniclge is Esper's 3 account 

 (1774) of the finding of bones in the cave at Grailenreuth which he recognised as 

 those of wolf. Rosenmuller 3 (1794), in a pamphlet written in Latin and dealing 

 principally with the fossil bears, stated that bones of dogs and foxes, as well as of 

 wolves, had been found in caves, but considered that the bones of foxes were intro- 



1 The terms "Pleistocene" and "Prehistoric" are used in the following pages in the sense as; 

 denned by Dawkins and Sanford, ' Monograph of the British Pleistocene Mammalia,' vol. i, p. 7. 

 3 ' Ausfuhrliche Nachricht — Zoolithen Bayreuth.' 

 3 ' Qusedam de Ossibus fossilibus animalis,' Leipzig, p. 27. 



1 



