CAYES AND THEIR OCCUPANTS. 
379 
Amongst the larger beasts of prey found at Creswell are the 
lion and the panther. The cave lion only differed in size from 
that of the present day. Like most of the wild animals of the 
Pleistocene age, it was larger and more powerful. Throughout 
Europe, from Italy in the south to the wilds of Yorkshire in the 
north, the lion was commonly met with, although it is now 
found only in Africa and in parts of Asia ; but there is some 
evidence that it was still existing in south-eastern Europe as 
lately as the first century of the Christian era. One of the 
most remarkable animals that appears to have once inhabited 
middle as well as southern England was a large feline species 
that must have been a terror to its weaker contemporaries. 
This was the Machairodus latidens , a beast armed with teeth 
that have been not inaptly compared to sabres, the canines 
being thin and recurved blades, with serrated edges, of the 
most formidable appearance. The remains of this animal, 
which have been met with in some abundance in France, until 
it was discovered in the Bobin Hood’s cave, had only twice before 
been found in England — in Kent’s Hole, in Devonshire, where a 
few teeth occurred in conjunction with other Pleistocene bones. 
At Creswell only one canine has been found, possibly brought 
there by a human hand, but not improbably also denoting the 
occurrence of the Machairodus as a contemporary of the lions, 
bears, and hyaenas of the surrounding country. 
Enough bones and teeth of bears have been discovered in the 
Creswell caves to denote the existence of at least two large 
species, the great grizzly ( Ursus ferox) and the brown bear ( U. 
arctos ). The first of these is identical with the present species 
familiar to the North American fur-hunters ; and the smaller 
brown bear is not uncommon in many parts of Europe. It was 
still living in Scotland as recently as a.d. 1057, when the last 
specimen is said to have been killed. Another bear, now 
extinct, common to caves — the huge cave bear (JJ. spelceus ) — 
has not been certainly met with at Creswell, but is common in 
many other caverns, both in England and abroad. 
Eemains of wolves and foxes occur in all the Creswell caves ; 
some of the former denoted very large animals, and have been 
thought by Professor Busk to have been possibly allied to the 
arctic, or North American, rather than to the existing European 
species. If this be the case it will then have been a fit com- 
panion for such animals as the arctic fox, the glutton, and the 
reindeer, all of which have been found in British caverns, the 
Arctic fox having been recognized for the first time in this 
country in the remains from the Pin Hole cave at Creswell ; it 
appears, however, to have abounded formerly in Belgium, and 
even as far south as Switzerland, and to have been well known 
to the Palaeolithic hunters, who have skilfully engraved its 
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