Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1840
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.
471/494 page 463
![The bones in the caves in Germany are so much the object of the curious that the specimens are dispersed throughout Europe, which prevent a sufficient number coming into the hands of any one person to make him acquainted with the animals to which they belong. | From the history and figures given by Esper it appears that there are the bones of several animals; but what is curious, they all ap- pear to have been carnivorous, which we should not have expected. There are teeth, in number, kind, and mode of setting, exactly simi- lar to the white bear, others more like those of the lion; but the representations of parts, however well executed, are hardly to be trusted to for the nicer characters, and much less so when the parts are mutilated.* The bones sent by his Highness the Margrave of Anspach agree with those described and delineated by Esper as belonging to the white bear; how far they are of the same species among themselves IT cannot say. The heads differ in shape from each other; they are, upon the whole, much longer for their breadth than in any canivorous animal J. know of: they also differ from the present white bear, which, as far as I have seen, has a common propor- tional breadth. It is supposed, indeed, that the heads of the present white bear differ from one another; but the trath of this assertion I have not seen heads enough of that animal to determine. The heads not only vary in shape but also in size; for some of them, when compared with the recent white bear, would seem to have belonged to an animal twice its size: while some of the bones correspond in size with those of the white bear, and others are even smaller.t There are two ossa humeri, rather of a less size than those of the recent white bear; a first vertebra, rather smaller; the teeth also vary considerably in size, yet they are all those of the same tribe ; so that the variety among themselves is not less than between them and the recent. In the formation of the head, age makes a considerable difler- ence: the skull of a young dog is much more rounded than an old one ; the ridge leading back to the occiput, terminating in the two lateral ones, hardly exists in a young dog; and among the present bones there is the back part of such a head, yet it is larger than the to the living animals, and had thus become the depository of the remains of successive generations, agrees with the theory proposed by Dr. Buckland with reference to the bones of the hyenas, accumulated at Kirkdale, the chief argu- ment in support of which is derived from the abundance of earthy or bony dung with which the fossils are associated.] * [Remains of an indubitably large feline animal have been found associated with the bears’ bones in the Bayreuth and Gaybureuth caverns. The mutilated cranium figured by Leibnitz in his Protogea, Pl. XI., is considered by Soem- mering to have belonged to a Jion.] ft It is to be understood that the bones of the white bear that I have, belonged to one that had been a show, and had not grown to the full or natural size; and I make allowance for this in my assertion that the heads of those incrusted appear to belong to an animal twice the size of our white bear.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33292292_0471.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
