Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/156

130 conical teeth, surrounded at the base of the crown by a belt of enamel, are eminently adapted for crunching bones, for which it has a predilection. It is a sneaking and cowardly animal, and on any show of resistance by its intended victim will hesitate and even retire. Remains of the Spotted Hyæna have been found in upwards of thirty different caverns in England, and generally in such abundance, as compared with other bones, as to show that it was plentifully distributed over the low lands and forests of ancient Britain. The reason for its absence from Ireland, as before noticed, is not clear; unless, perhaps, there was no direct highway between the two islands, as there was between England and the European continent. Moreover, it may be that the country was not sufficiently inviting, although large game, such as the Reindeer and the so-called Irish Elk, abounded. At all events, not a trace of the Hyæna has as yet been found in Ireland, and there are no authentic accounts of any such remains from Scotland, which, as far as the northern parts were concerned, was then doubtless more or less clad in snow and ice. Again, the habits of the Spotted Hyæna, as now known, show that it is not a beast of the mountains, but of the plains.

All the quadrupeds which have lingered on in Great Britain to within historical times were evidently sooner exterminated in England than elsewhere. furnishes an instance. It was quite a scourge in various parts of Ireland and Scotland during the seventeenth century, especially in the former country, where a breed of wolf dogs was carefully preserved. This race of dogs is now also extinct. It resembled the Scotch Deerhound, but the skull was more wolf-like, so that there is now some difficulty in distinguishing the one from the other. Traces of old circular entrenchments, into which cattle, sheep, and goats were driven for protection from wolves, are still met with in abundance in many parts of Ireland, especially in the southern counties. Unlike other extinct British beasts, the Wolf apparently has not deteriorated in size, for the fossil bones which have been discovered are not larger, nor in any way to be distinguished from those of European Wolves of the present day.