Among the antediluvian Carnivora, one of the most formidable seems to have been the _Ursus spelæus_, or Cave-bear (Fig. 183). This species must have been a fifth, if not a fourth, larger than the Brown Bear of our days. It was also more squat: some of the skeletons we possess are from nine to ten feet long, and only about six feet high. The _U. spelæus_ abounded in England, France, Belgium, and Germany; and so extensively in the latter country, that the teeth of the antediluvian Bear, as we have already stated, formed for a long time part of its materia medica, under the name of _fossil licorn_. Fig. 183 represents the skull of the Cave-bear. At the same time with the _Ursus spelæus_ another Carnivore, the _Felis spelæus_, or Cave-lion, lived in Europe. This animal is specifically identical with the living Lion of Asia and Africa: but since in these early times he had not to contend with the hunter for food, he was, on the whole, considerably larger than any Lion now existing on the earth. [Illustration: Fig. 183.--Head of Ursus spelæus.] The Hyænas of our age consist of two species, the striped and the spotted Hyænas. The last presents considerable conformity in its structure with that of the Post-pliocene period, which Cuvier designates under the name of the fossil Spotted Hyæna. It seems to have been only a little larger than the existing species. Fig. 184 represents the head of the _Hyæna spelæa_, whose remains, with those of others, were found in the caves of Kirkdale and Kent’s Hole; the remains of about 300 being found in the former. Dr. Buckland satisfied himself, from the quantity of their dung, that the Hyænas had lived there. In the cave were found remains of the ox, young elephant, rhinoceros, horse, bear, wolf, hare, water-rat, and several birds. All the bones present an appearance of having been broken and gnawed by the teeth of the Hyænas, and they occur confusedly mixed in loam or mud, or dispersed through the crust of stalagmite which covered the contents of the cave. The Horse dates from the Quaternary epoch, if not from the last period of the Tertiary epoch. Its remains are found in the same rocks with those of the Mammoth and the Rhinoceros. It is distinguished from our existing Horse only by its size, which was smaller--its remains abound in the Post-pliocene rocks, not only in Europe, but in America; so that an aboriginal Horse existed in the New World long before it was carried thither by the Spaniards, although we know that it was unknown at the date of their arrival. “Certainly it is a marvellous fact in the history of the Mammalia, that in South America, a native horse should have lived and disappeared, to be succeeded in after ages by the countless herds descended from the few introduced with the Spanish colonists!”[99] [99] “Darwin’s Journal,” p. 130. [Illustration: Fig. 184.--Head of Hyæna spelæa.]