From the caves at Hutton, the Rev. D. Williams obtained the milk-teeth and other remains of a calf-elephant, about two years old, and those of a young tiger, just shedding its milk-teeth; also the grinders of a young horse, that were casting their coronary surfaces; and remains of two species of hyæna.
But one instance of the fossil bones of Carnivora has been observed in the south-east of England. It occurred in a fissure in a quarry of sandstone at Boughton, near Maidstone; among other bones, the lower jaw of a Hyæna (see Frontispiece of Vol. I.), with the teeth, was obtained.[768]
[768] See Mag. Nat. Hist. 1836, vol. ix. p. 593; and Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. vii. p. 383.
In the modern silt of our alluvial districts, the remains of carnivorous animals, formerly indigenous to this island, are occasionally met with; and the skeleton of the Brown Bear (a species which inhabited Scotland eight centuries ago), and of the Wolf, whose extinction is of a yet later date, have been discovered. The Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge contains an entire skull of the Brown Bear (Ursus arctos), found in the Manea Fen of Cambridgeshire;[769] in an ancient fresh-water deposit, near Bacton, in Norfolk, the right lower jaw of the Bear of the Caverns (Ursus spelæus), has been discovered;[770] and the phalangeal bone of a large Bear has been found by Mr. J. Brown in the pleistocene deposits at Copford, Essex, with the remains of Beaver, Elephant, Stag, &c. (Geol. Journ. vol. viii. p. 187.)
[769] A beautiful lignograph of this specimen is given in Hist. Brit. Foss. Mam. p. 77, fig. 24.
[770] Hist. Brit. Foss. Mam. p. 89.
Thus the remains of fossil Carnivora discovered in England comprise several kinds of Bear[771] (including the two species of the caverns of Germany, U. priscus and U. spelæus), and of Tiger, Hyæna, Wolf, Fox, &c.
[771] Petrif. p. 398. In the Pict. Atlas, pl. lxxiii., is a good figure of a large Bear’s tooth. Teeth of Bear, Tiger, Hyæna, and Arvicola, are figured in Ly. p. 161.
Although we cannot dwell on foreign localities of Carnivora, I may mention that the lacustrine pliocene formation of Œningen occasionally yields fine remains. A splendid specimen, obtained from that locality by Sir R. I. Murchison, displays almost the entire skeleton of a Fox-like animal, the Galecynus Œningensis of Prof. Owen.[772]
[772] See Geol. Trans. 2d ser. vol. iii. pl. xxxiii.; and Quart. Geol. Journ. vol. iii. p. 55.