THE BONE CAVES OF THE PLYMOUTH DISTRICT. Ill 
positive way. One step further is, however, possible. The lowest 
deposits in Kent's Cavern, known as the Ursine beds, have yielded 
no remains of hyaena ; and Mr. Pengelly argues thence that the 
hyaena did not reach this country until after the Ursine period, 
when Britain was in its last continental state. * As our ossiferous 
deposits are referable to one epoch, and include the hyaena, they 
must therefore have originated either during the continuance of, or 
subsequent to, that final continental condition. 
Professor Boyd Dawkins, f.r.s., in his Treatise on the British 
Pleistocene Mammalia, points out that " the present wild animals 
of Europe are merely the survivors of a large and varied group 
that lived on the Pleistocene continent.! Between the Pleistocene 
period and our own time lie his Prehistoric and Historic periods, 
the latter commencing for every country with its first authentic 
record, and the former filling up the interval between it and the 
Pleistocene. "It is characterized by the advent of the swine, dog, 
sheep, goat, and the domestic horse and oxen into Europe under 
the care of man. "f We have scant information concerning the date 
of extinction of our wild animals of Pleistocene times. Professor 
Dawkins holds it to be probable that the wolf was exterminated 
in England and Wales before the end of the fourteenth century, % 
while Pennant says that the last in Scotland was killed by Sir 
Ewan Cameron in 1680. According to tradition the last wolf in 
Cornwall was killed in the parish of Ludgvan somewhat earlier. The 
wild boar became extinct before the reign of Charles I. ; the beaver 
was hunted for its fur in Wales in the twelfth century ; the bear 
existed in England during the Roman occupation; the reindeer 
lingered on in Caithness until the twelfth century, and died out 
about the same time as the beaver. All the other extinct repre- 
sentatives of our Pleistocene fauna had disappeared before historic 
times ; but there is nothing, unless it be the doubtful inosculation 
of the sheep, to indicate whether our cave deposits belong to the 
Pleistocene period as distinguished from the Prehistoric or not. § 
In conclusion I have to present a tabular statement of our local 
cavern fauna, in which uncertain are distinguished from specific 
identifications, and the fauna of every " find " shown independently. 
* See "Rep. Brit. Assoc.," 1877, Trans. Sec, p. 65, for a valuable 
comparative chronological table of the Kent's Cavern periods, by Mr. 
Pengelly. f " Paleeontographical Society," 1878, p. vi. 
f Ibid. pp. vi., vii. % Ibid. pp. x., xi. § Dawkins, op. cit. p. xi., xii. 
