380 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
likeness on some of their bone implements. It is also from the 
Pin Hole that the only trace of the glutton, as occurring at 
Creswell, has been derived. This animal is the Wolverine of 
the North Americans. It also lives in Siberia, and its bones have 
been found in several British caves, as well as in those of 
Belgium. Its presence is, as has been observed, significant of 
the prevalence of a severe climate. In Kamtschatka, where it 
is sometimes found, its skin is so highly prized by the natives- 
that they say the heavenly beings are clothed in it. 
The principal ruminants whose bones and teeth have been 
found at Creswell are the great ox, or urus ; a lesser species, 
known as the Celtic shorthorn ( Bos longifrons ) ; the bison, and 
various deer, the most prominent of which are the reindeer and 
the megaceros, sometimes called the Irish elk. The huge urus 
( B . jprimigenius ), the bones of which were found in the Pin 
Hole, was not only common in Pleistocene times, but was also 
known to the Eomans, and, except in size, there is no real 
difference between it and the existing ox : the wild cattle of 
Chillingham, in fact, are supposed by some writers to be its 
direct descendants. The size of this animal in the Pleistocene 
period was, however, immense, being as much as six feet high, 
and from eleven to twelve feet long. Professor Owen has re- 
marked that u the extensive range it had, when in former times 
it wandered at will in vast herds over the whole of England, and 
the abundant food it would find, tended to its development, 
whilst after the submergence of the old Pleistocene lowlands it 
would have had a harder battle to fight, and would thus have de- 
generated. This, and the hostility of man, may help to account 
for the greater size of nearly all the Pleistocene mammalia, as 
compared with their descendants.” It has been observed that the 
Urus seems to have held its ground after the elephants, rhino- 
ceroses, hyaenas, and other animals had retreated southwards, 
although in Roman times it was probably scarce ; still, we 
read of its existence in a wild state, together 'with the bison, as 
late as the close of the eleventh century, near Aachen, and in 
Poland even up to the sixteenth century. 
In the red sand bed of the Creswell caves remains of the bison 
were tolerably numerous. This animal, which still lives in North 
America as well as in the forests of Lithuania, was a contem- 
porary of the Urus, and with it disappeared from history ; it does 
not seem to have been known in historical times in Northern 
Europe. 
Reindeer remains, teeth, bones, and broken antlers — the bones 
and antlers, with few exceptions, having been gnawed by the 
hyaenas — were very abundant at Creswell, both old and young 
animals being well represented. The reindeer seems to have 
ranged throughout the greater part of Europe, and with other 
