BRITISH BEARS AND WOLVES. 
247 
bear. It has, however, not been found in any pre-glacial 
deposit north of the Alps, but is strictly a post-glacial creature 
in France, Germany, and Britain. Like the cave-bear, it 
vanished away before the dawn of the pre-historic age. At 
the present day, according to Sir John Bichardson,* it inhabits 
the region of the Bocky Mountains and the plains lying to the 
eastward, as far north as latitude 61°, and, according to Lieut. 
Pike, as far south as Mexico. It must have retreated to its 
present abode by the same route as its arctic fellow-inhabitant 
of Great Britain in post-glacial times, the musk-sheep, east- 
ward over the great plains of Siberia, and over the straits of 
Bheering. The massive skulls of the mnsk-sheep scattered 
through the post-glacial strata of France, Germany, and Bussia, 
and preserved in the frozen gravels of Northern Siberia, and 
lastly, in the ice-cliff in Eschscholtz Bay, on the American side 
of Bheering’s Straits, point out unerringly the continuity of 
land, and the direction in which the migration took place. 
The common European bear, Ursus Arctos , is the fourth and 
last of the species which have inhabited England during the 
geological past, and it is of considerable interest, because it is the 
largest of the post-glacial carnivores which can be brought into 
relation with our history. It occurs but sparingly in the post- 
glacial deposits of Great Britain, and was by no means so 
abundant as the two other post-glacial species. It has not yet 
been discovered in any pleiocene deposit, nor has it excited the 
attention of the foreign palaeontologists, and consequently we 
cannot tell its ancient Continental range. In Britain it sur- 
vived those changes which exterminated the characteristic 
post-glacial mammalia, and is found in the pre-historic deposits 
both in Great Britain and Ireland. It is described by Professor 
Owen from the marls underneath the peat of Manea fen, in 
which also reindeer, the Celtic shorthorn, and horse, have been 
found, and is mentioned by Mr. Scott as having been discovered 
both in Longford and King’s County. (“ Catalogue of Mam- 
malian Fossils discovered in Ireland,” Geological Society, Dublin, 
February 10, 1864.) It became extinct in Ireland probably 
before the historic period, for according to St. Donatus, who 
died in 840, in that favoured island, “ Ursorum rabies nulla est 
ibi.” Sir William Wilde mentions, however, that there is an 
Irish name for the animal in an old glossary in the library of 
Trinity College, and Thompson mentions traditions of the 
existence of the animal. (Mr. Scott, op. cit.) 
The recent exploration of the Victoria cave, near Settle, has 
revealed the fact that the Ursus Arctos formed a portion of the 
food of the Neolithic dwellers in the cave, who have left the 
u Fauna Boreali- Americana/ 
