Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/151

Rh was a native of that island. It was, however, generally distributed over Central and Northern Europe, and it still lingers on the Eastern Alps and in Russia, and is spread over Northern Asia, and probably also the boreal regions of North America. In the colour of the fur, and also in size, in different countries it is subject to considerable variation, so that naturalists considered the individuals from Norway, Syria, the Himalayas, and Siberia as so many distinct species. If the mere external coloration, however, and a few other minor points be disregarded, it will be found that the bony skeletons of all agree in characters which, as compared with other bears, at once place them in the same category with the typical Brown Bear (U. arctos). In regard to size, the skulls and bones dug up in the fens, peat-bogs, and superficial deposits in England certainly belonged to large individuals, but not larger than many now inhabiting different parts of Europe and Asia.

Not only does historical evidence, accompanied by the discovery of its bones in peat and alluvium, point to the existence of the Brown Bear in unrecorded times, but we find its bones, associated with those of at all events very much larger species, in the caverns and deep soils of England; moreover, seeing that the remains in either case represent very old individuals, and that the teeth and bones differ in many respects, there is good cause to believe in the former existence in Great Britain of at least two species of Bear.

The Great Bear of the caverns and the Brown Bear were therefore contemporaneous. As to the former, on arranging and comparing exuviæ collected in Great Britain and on the Continent with bones of living species, it has been found that they admit of division into three, or at least two, distinct forms. One agrees with the skeleton of the Grisly Bear, now chiefly found in the Rocky Mountains and western prairies; the other (Ursus spelæus) and perhaps a third (U. priscus) have no living representatives, and may therefore be considered as having become extinct in Great Britain long before the historical period. But the Grisly Bear, as far as is known, seems to have disappeared likewise about the same time.

The Ursus priscus was the giant of all. Although not rare in England, it appears to have been very common in Southern France and in the Pyrenees, judging from the quantities of bones discovered in the caves and soils. It would appear that, irrespective