It is remarkable that while the remains of a large and extinct species of bear, although found in our caves, are much more common on the Continent, the bones of the hyena form by far the largest proportion of those obtained from the English caverns. Thus under the incrustated floors of our rock-crevices and hollows, we And the proofs that our island was once inhabited by brutes which are now confined to Africa and the adjacent parts of Asia. But the extinct hyena of England was a much larger and more formidable animal than either the striped hyena of Abyssinia or the spotted hyena of the Cape, the latter of whom it most resembled. The abundance of these animals, and the length of the period during which they inhabited England, may be inferred from Dr. Buckland’s account of the opening of the celebrated cavern of Kirkdale. ‘The bottom of the cave, on first removing the mud, was found to be strewed all over, like a dog-kennel, from one end to the other, with hundreds of teeth and bones, and on some of the bones marks could be traced, which, on applying one to the other, appeared exactly to fit the form of the canine teeth of the hyena that occurred in the cave. Mr. Gibson alone collected more than three hundred canine teeth of the hyena, which must have belonged to at least seventy-five individuals, and adding to these the similar teeth I have seen in other collections, I cannot calculate the total number of hyenas, of which there is evidence, at less than two or three hundred.’ The grisly bear of the Rocky Mountains (_Ursus ferox_) is the most ferocious of its race at the present day. It is about nine feet long, and is said to attain the weight of 800 pounds. Its strength is so prodigious that even the bison contends with it in vain. But this huge and formidable animal was surpassed in size and strength by the extinct bear (_Ursus spelaeus_) which once inhabited the caverns of Europe, at a time when vast and interminable forests covered the land, and the Rhine and the Danube flowed through wastes like those through which the Mackenzie or the Yenissei now find their way to the ocean. From the proportions of the molar teeth, and from some peculiarities of appearance and wearing, it has been inferred that this extinct species lived chiefly on vegetable food; but its prodigious strength, and the huge canines with which its jaws were armed, enabled it to cope with its contemporaries, the large Auerox and the teichorhine rhinoceros, and to defend itself successfully against the large lion or tiger whose remains have also been found in the caverns of western Europe, and which, if we may judge by the size of their canine teeth, must have been more than a match for the largest felides of the present day.