344 
parative anatomy brought to bear on the fossil remains 
exhumed in former times, on the other. This question, 
however, is now clear of all further doubt, as several truly- 
ursine crania have been discovered in Ireland within the last 
thirty or forty years. Archdeacon Maunsell, in his account 
to Lord Northland, of the exhumation of the bones of the 
Megaceros, or gigantic Irish Deer, in 1824, says, " I have 
also a skull of a dog of large kind, at least of a carnivorous 
animal, which I found lying close to some of the remains of 
the deer. Whether the above skull was that of a dog or 
bear — though most probably of the latter — cannot now be 
satisfactorily determined, as the specimen is lost. Another 
skull, however, undoubtedly ursine, was exhumed several 
years since, in deepening a river, near Parsonstown, by a 
gentleman named Cooke, which is now, I believe, in the 
British Museum. In 1846 and 1847, two remarkably fine 
crania of gigantic species of bears were discovered seven feet 
from the surface, in a deposit of marl, beneath peat, in 
cutting away a bog on the borders of Westmeath, between 
Moyvore and Ballymahon, by Mr. Edward Fermon, of 
Forgney, County of Longford. These were purchased by a 
gentleman named Baker, who presented casts to the Royal 
Irish Academy, in 1849, through my late friend Dr. Ball, of 
Dublin, by whom the circumstances of their discovery were 
brought before that learned body, accompanied by Professor 
Owen's testimony as to their identity.* Casts of the above 
skulls, as also of that from Parsonstown, had also been trans- 
mitted to the learned Professor, who stated it as his opinion, 
that they belonged to " a gigantic fen bear, closely allied to 
the Black Bear of Europe (Ursus Arctos), and that the largest 
of these were males, and the small, or Parsonstown example, 
with well-worn molar teeth, was a female. ' ' Finally these skulls 
passed into the hands of the late Mr. Glennon and Mr. J. 
* Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. iv., p* 410. 
