438 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



Rhmolophm fernm- 



Sorex vulgaris 

 Meles taxus 

 Futorms vulgaris 

 Tutorius ermineus 

 Canis lupus 

 Vulpes vulgaris 

 Felis Catus 

 Arvicola ampJiihia 

 Arvicola agrestis 

 Arvicola pratemis 

 Lepus variabilis 

 Lepus cuniculus 

 Cermis elephus 

 Cervus tarandws 

 Cervus capreohis 



EECENT SPECIES. 



Great horse-shoe bat 



Shrew 



Badger 



Polecat 



Stoat 



Wolf 



Fox 



Wild cat 

 Water-vole 

 Pield-vole 

 Bank-Tole 

 Norway hare 

 Rabbit 

 Bed deer 

 Bein-deer 

 Boe deer 



Ke 



Ke 

 Ke B 

 B 



Ke B 0? Ki 

 Ke O Ki G? 

 Ke O 

 Ke 



Ke B 0? Ki 

 Ke Ki 

 Ke 



Ke Ki 

 Ke B Ki 

 Ke Ki 

 B 



Devon G 



In the above list, initials are appended to the names for the purpose of 

 showing in what caverns the fossils are recorded to have been found, thus : Ke, 

 Kent's Hole, Torquay ; B, Berry Head, Ash Hole ; 0, Oreston ; Ki, Kirk- 

 dale ; G, Gower ; jVi, The Mendip caves ; and D, the caves on Durdham 

 Down, near Bristol. 



In all there are thirty-three species, of which seventeen are peculiar to the 

 Devonshire-caves. Of these thirty-three, seventeen are extinct, and sixteen 

 still exist, a few of the latter being locally extinct. Three additional species 

 have been found in other British caves, but no traces of them seem, hitherto, 

 to have been met with in Devonshire, namely, the common mouse, Mus mus- 

 mlus, found in the Kirkdale-cavem ; the wild hog, Sus scrofa, found in the 

 caves of the Mendip-hills ; and the fallow deer, Cervus dama, found, according 

 to some authorities, in the caves at Kirkdale and Paviland. 



Of the Devonshii-e caverns, Kent's Hole has yielded by far the greatest 

 number and variety of specimens, no fewer than twenty-five, perhaps twenty- 

 seven species have been disinterred from that celebrated mausoleum. Next to it 

 stand the Oreston caves, or fissures, where have been exhumed fourteen, or 

 perha])s sixteen species. I find two species, Cervus Bucklandi and Cervus 

 capreoluSy assigned to Devonshire, without the cavern in which they were found 

 being named. Hence nineteen or seventeen, as the case may be, of the Devon- 

 shke list are unrepresented in the Oreston series. Two of these, the shrew 

 and the polecat, have been found in a raised beach at Plymouth, about a mile 

 from Oreston. 



Some little doubt exists respecting two of the species which some authors 

 assign to Oreston, namely the stoat, or weazel, and the water-vole, as will ap- 

 pear from the following passage in Professor Owen's " British Possil Mam- 

 malia." " Purther evidence of the antiquity of the weasel is adduced by Dr. 

 Buckland, on the authority of Mr. Clift, from marks of nibbling by the incisor- 

 and canine -teeth of a small quadi uped of the size of a weasel on the ulna of a 

 wolf and the tibia of a horse found fossil in one of the caves at Oreston ; and 

 the author of the " Reliquoe Diluvianse" observes, -with his usual acumen, that 

 the weasel's teeth must have made their impressions on the bones of the wolf 



