As, unfortunately, the slender transverse processes are both broken off in the cave-specimen, their size can only be estimated from the fractured surface, close to which the vertebrarterial foramen or short canal may be seen, which appears to be of very small size, as in the Arctic compared with the common Fox.
The greater prominence of the keel in the Arctic Fox is seen both in the front view and, still better, in the lateral view of the axis of both the Arctic and Cave-Fox (figs. 1 & 2) as compared with the same point in fig. 3. In both the small vertebræ the keel will be seen (in the side view, b) to project slightly beyond the level of the lateral alæ of the centrum, by which, in the common Fox it is concealed when the bone is viewed in the same position.
Having compared several specimens of the Arctic Fox, it appears to me that the differences above noted are constant; and I have therefore little or no hesitation in referring the axis from Creswell Crags to Canis lagopus, thus adding that species, so far as I am aware, for the first time to the British antral fauna.
The association, moreover, of this species with the Reindeer, Glutton, and Elk cannot be regarded as at all improbable[1].
4. Gulo luscus.
Not more than two well-marked remains of the Glutton have been noticed by me in the collection. One of these, which is represented in the accompanying woodcut (fig. 4), is a fragment of the pelvis, presenting the acetabulum and portions of the foramen ovale and of the greater sciatic notch. The distinctive characters of the bone nevertheless seem to be fully shown in this fragment. The only species of mammal whose pelvis in the corresponding part could be confounded with the present specimen is the common Badger (Meles taxus); but the difference between the two, even in such an imperfect relic, is sufficiently marked. In Gulo the foramen ovale is more elongated than in the Badger, in which it is nearly circular; and this greater length is well shown in the specimen figured.
Again, the edge of the ischial border of the greater sciatic notch is more abruptly curved inwards at the upper part, as at b in the figure, in Gulo than in Meles.
- ↑ In a recent number of the Archiv. f. Anthropologie vol. viii. p. 123 et seq.)is an account by M. Rütimeyer of the animal remains discovered in a cavern at Thayingen, near Schaffhausen. Amongst these he describes the remains of two species of Fox differing from the common European C. vulpes. One, of which not less than 60 lower jaws were met with and a good many upper ones, resembled in its dentition C. (Vulpes) fulvus of America. Of the second species, which M. Rütimeyer terms C. lagopus, about 90 mandibles besides other bones were found, whilst the animal itself was very graphically represented in an incised engraving on a bone of Reindeer, showing that without doubt this Arctic species was at that period abundant in Middle Europe and familiarly known to the men of the Reindeer Period in Switzerland. It is interesting also to remark that M. Rütimeyer enumerates in the fauna of Thayingen five individuals at least of the Glutton, and that, although no actual relics of the Musk-Ox were discovered, certain evidence of its existence in the neighbourhood at the same period was afforded by a very characteristic carving of the head in bone.
