﻿INTRODUCTION. xxxvii 



by the Mr. MacEnery ; and in Kirkdale, by Dr. Buckland, in association with the extinct 

 and living species of Pleistocene mammalia. 



2. Species Lepus cuniculus, Pall. — The rabbit also has been found in Kent's Hole, 

 Kirkdale, and the Mendip Caverns, and, on the authority of Professor Owen, also in the 

 cave at Berry Head. 



Genus Lemmus, Link. Species (?). — The remains of two or three individuals 



of the genus Lemmus, Lemming, obtained by Dr. Blackmore, from the low-level gravels of 

 Fisherton, near Salisbury, in association with the remains of the reindeer, tichorhine rhi- 

 noceros, mammoth, and spermophilus, proves this northern genus to have been represented in 

 Britain during the Pleistocene period. Whether or no it be identical in species with the 

 Norwegian Lemming Lemmus Norwegicus, Desmarest, or that of Greenland, Mus Green- 

 landicus, Trail, Arvicola Greenlandica, Richardson, or that of Hudson's Bay, or any of 

 those described by Richardson in his great work ' Fauna Boreali- Americana,' or of those 

 described by Pallas, in Siberia and Lapland, is entirely an open question, requiring more 

 time for its solution than this Introduction would allow. It will be fully discussed in the 

 body of the work. 



Genus Lagomys. Species Lagomys spelceus, Owen. — We owe to Professor Owen the 

 determination and description of the tail-less hare, discovered by Mr. MacEnery, in Kent's 

 Hole, and figured in the beautiful unpublished plates by Scharf, for a second volume of 

 the ' Reliquiae Diluvianae,' of which the death of Buckland deprived the scientific world. 

 Baron Cuvier had determined, wdth his usual sagacity, the occurrence of this northern 

 genus of Rodent, in the ossiferous Breccia of Cette in Corsica and in Gibraltar; and he 

 considered it to be closely allied to the Lagomys Alpinus, or larger species of tail-less 

 hare described by Pallas. Professor Owen considers also that the Kent's Hole fossil is 

 closely allied to the same species, but that it is slightly larger ; and a comparison of pi. 

 lxxxiv of the ' British Fossil Mammals,' with the figures of Lagomys alpinus, and L. 

 pusillus, given in tab. iv, a, in the beautifully illustrated treatise on 'Novas Species e 

 Glirium ordine' of Dr. Pallas (4to, Erlangse, 1778), proves the truth of his remarks. 

 The genus at the present day is confined to the Himalayas, Siberia, and the high latitudes 

 of North America. Richardson describes it as living in the Rocky Mountains. No 

 species of it is found at the present day in Europe. A second instance of the occurrence 

 of this species in Britain is afforded by Mr. Busk, F.R.S., who has identified among the 

 remains from the Brixham Cave, those that can in no way be differentiated from the 

 species found in Kent's Hole. Whether Lagomys spelaus be an extinct species or not is 

 by no means satisfactorily determined ; but in the absence of absolute evidence upon this 

 point, we think it highly probable that it may turn out to belong to some one of the many 

 species that live in the cold regions of the northern hemisphere. 



Genus Spermophilus. Species Spermophilus erythrogenoides, Falc. — The identification 

 of two lower jaws in the collection of mammalia from the Mendip Caverns, made by the 

 late Rev. D. Williams, and now in the Taunton Museum, we owe to Dr. Falconer, who 



