345 
Glennon, of Dublin, in whose possession they have been for 
several j r ears. Upon the first discovery of these skulls, they 
were generally supposed to be those of the great Irish wolf- 
dog ; and Richardson, in his work on dogs, states it as his 
opinion, " that they are the remains of an extinct animal 
allied to, but by no means identical with, the dog ; and an 
animal with which we are now unacquainted, partaking some- 
what of the characteristics of bears, perhaps also of the hyaenas. " 
Mr. Glennon, sen., alwa} T s considered them as belonging to 
gigantic badgers, to which they were certainly more nearly 
allied than to the canida?, the two families being readily 
identified by a careful inspection. For although considerable 
difference is observable in the skulls of bears at different 
ages, as also arising from sex, yet there is always a peculiarity 
of form and general contour which, under any circumstances, 
would distinguish the bear from the dog, however gigantic 
the latter : and still more so the hyama, whose dentition alone, 
leaving out the great breadth and shortness of the zygomatic 
portion of the skull, would be sufficient to identify the 
species of that genus from any other carnivorous mammal. 
The skull of a bear, similar to the Black Bear of the 
P}Tenees, was found a few years since, with swords and 
other weapons, by a Mr. Gray, in an excavation about four 
feet deep, made for the channel of the river Boyne, in the 
County of Kildare. 
In March, 1859, the remains of two species of bears were 
found in a limestone quarry at Shandon, in Dungarvan, 
County of AVexford, with bones of the Mammoth, by Mr. 
Brenan. These have been described in a valuable com- 
munication to the Royal Dublin Society, by Dr. Carte, of 
Dublin, as belonging to the great Cave Bear, Ursus spelaeus, 
and the brown or Fen Bear, Ursus Arctos. 
In a recent exhumation of bones from Lough Gur, near 
Limerick, in August last, a right humerus, a left femur, 
dd2 
