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majority ? If such has been the case, the bears, at least, 
can only have been dragged into the caves when dead ; for 
the great Cave Bear would have been too powerful an 
antagonist for an hyaena in single combat, unless when aged, 
or weakened by disease ; — and such opportunities woidd be of 
only casual occurrence — and even then only portions could 
be carried home, as no single hyaena would be able to drag 
so ponderous a load as a dead Cave Bear. The same 
reasoning will also apply to the rhinoceros, mammoth, 
megaceros, horse, or ox, whose remains are frequently found 
in a fragmentary condition in such receptacles or primaeval 
charnel-houses. The only reasonable inference, therefore, 
we can arrive at is this, that these extinct Carnivora were 
social as to species, and consequently that in each instance 
the majority have been for successive generations the 
dominant inhabitants of the cave, and the minority either 
subsequent tenants, or the food of the former, as many 
animals, especially the herbivorous, have evidently been 
from the knawed and broken state of their bones. These 
alwaj's bear a small proportion to those belonging to the 
supposed legitimate tenants of the cave. 
While, however, the species of the genus Ursus appear to 
have been extensively distributed over Europe in early 
periods of the world, and to have occurred in various parts of 
England and Wales, bears were not supposed to have ever 
been indigenous in Ireland, principally from the circum- 
stance that the earliest authorities or historians, had distinctly 
asserted that bears were unknown in Ireland ! The 
Venerable Bede states the only ravenous animals of Ireland 
were the wolf and the fox. Giraldus makes no mention of 
the bear ; and St. Donatus, who died in 840, says it was not 
a native. " Ursorum rabies nulla est ibi." This erroneous 
idea has arisen, however, from their very early extinction on 
the one hand, and from the imperfect knowledge of com- 
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