REPORT ON THE EXPLORATION OF BRIXHAM CAVE. 
543 
considerable number now in the British Museum, the actual dimensions of which are given 
in the sixth line. In the seventh line are given, for the purpose of direct comparison, the 
mean dimensions of the Brixham molar teeth, as taken from the former Table. These 
numbers, it will be seen, do not greatly exceed those in the fifth and sixth lines, though 
they fall far short of those in the fourth. This is in support of the opinion that these 
teeth belong to more than one species ; but at the same time the lowness of the 
numbers would serve to show either that there was a great admixture of very small 
with the large teeth, or that the greater part of them were of an intermediate size, 
corresponding pretty nearly with that of TJ. prisons. This I believe to be the case ; but 
the evidence in support of the supposition is defective in some measure, as before 
observed, in the case of the Brixham teeth as compared with that of the others, in the 
circumstance that the dimensions are taken not from the successive teeth in the same 
jaws, but from isolated ones. 
In the eighth line will be found the dimensions of the various teeth in TJ. ferox, 
between which and those of the minor fossil form and of the typical TJrsus prisons 
(Goldfuss’s type) the closest correspondence will be seen to prevail, not in any particular 
teeth especially, but throughout the entire series, both upper and lower, as may be 
gathered at a glance from the two last columns in the Table, in which it is shown that the 
conjoined lengths of the upper molars is in smaller Cave-Bear 300 and in TJ. ferox 303, 
and of the lower 348 and 342, whilst the actual lengths of the molar series in TJ. prisons 
are 290 and 326 *. These coincidences appearing to me to be too close to be merely 
accidental, I compared side by side the typical skull of TJ. prisons in the British Museum 
with that of a fine and large specimen of TJ. ferox (No. 1137 b ). In doing this I was 
unable to perceive any difference whatever between them, except the rather larger size 
of the recent specimen. In every essential particular they appeared to be identical ; and 
I am consequently strongly inclined to the belief that it is impossible to draw a specific 
distinction between TJ. prisons, Cuv. ( fossilis , Gldf.), and TJ. ferox. On the same occasion 
also I compared a tolerably perfect cranium from a peat-bog at Clonbourne in Ireland, 
and which is named in the collection TJ. arctos (No. 28906), and found that it exhibited 
all the characters of the other two, and was manifestly as much TJ. prisons as the 
typical specimen itself. In the museum of the Philosophical Society of Leeds there 
are also two Irish-peat crania, one named TJ. spelceus and the other TJ. prisons, though 
there may be reason to doubt whether the former is correctly so namedf . The differences 
between them, including the width of the glenoid fossa, were precisely those which 
* This coincidence will he still more readily appreciated upon comparison of the Odontograms, Nos. 12 and 
13, Hate XL VII. 
t With respect to that named TJ. prisons I entertain no doubt ; but as the determination of the other has 
been made principally from its large size, it may possibly be the skull of a gigantic TJ. arctos, whose jaw, as 
represented by that from Manea Fen, is described by Professor Owen as equal in length “ to the largest speci- 
men of the lower jaw of the Ursus spelceus .” If so, the Fen Bear must have greatly exceeded any form of the 
existing Brown Bear, as Professor Owen himself observes. 
MDCCCLXXIII. 4 D 
