brought from Eschscholtz Bay. 417 



remarks are given : " It has been compared with all the skele- 

 tons in the collection at Paris, by Mr. Pentland, without 

 finding any to which it can be referred: he thinks the nature 

 of the articulation more resembles that in the sloth and ant- 

 eaters than in any other animal; but the bone differs from 

 them in other respects, and approaches to the character of the 

 Pachydermata. The animal, whatever it was, seems to have 

 differed essentially from any that now inhabit the polar regions 

 of the northern hemisphere." (Narrative, Appendix, p. 597.) 



On perusing this notice, and comparing it with the size 

 (about five inches in extent) of this vertebra, as shown by the 

 engraving, it occurred to me that it may perhaps be referable 

 to a species of Megatherium. This supposition is not pre- 

 cluded by the comparison made by Mr. Pentland, at Paris, 

 for there is no skeleton of the Megatherium, nor even I be- 

 lieve a single bone of that animal, in the Parisian collection, 

 the skeleton at Madrid being the only one at present extant 

 in Europe. The resemblance of the vertebra, in the nature 

 of the articulation, to the sloth and ant-eaters, accords exactly 

 with the ascertained characters of the osteology of the Mega- 

 therium; while its approach in other respects to the character 

 of the Pachydermata, is in agreement with the relations con- 

 necting the Edentata and Pachydermata in the series of mam- 

 miferous animals, which have been recognized by many na- 

 turalists, especially by Linnaeus and Cuvier. The former 

 naturalist placed all the Edentes of Cuvier with which he was 

 acquainted, in his own order of Bruta, in which were also 

 included the Pachydermes of Cuvier; and the latter, in his 

 Lecons $ Anatomic Comparee, makes his tribe of the Tardi- 

 grades (to which the Sloth and the Megatherium belong) the 

 means of transition from the other Edentes to the Pachy- 

 dermes ; and though he has not followed this arrangement in 

 his later Regne Animal, he has in that work repeatedly alluded 

 to the connexion between these groups*. 



It will probably be difficult if not impossible to decide this 



point 



animals of warm climates, belonging to genera very different from the 

 Elephant, are thickly covered with hair and wool, but that the two existing 

 species of the Elephant itself, both inhabiting warm climates, are devoid of 

 such a covering. This seems to be a more direct (converse) analogy, in fa- 

 vour of the supposition that the Siberian elephant was adapted to live in a 

 cold climate, than those mentioned by Dr. Buckland are, in favour of the 

 opposite view of the subject. 



I may also observe, in conclusion, that the facts cited by Cuvier, and re- 

 garded by him (in the extract given by Dr. Buckland at the end of his 

 memoir) as refuting the hypothesis of the gradual refrigeration of the 

 earth, merely show the last change of temperature to have been sudden, 

 and leave the validity of that hypothesis, as to all preceding changes, un- 

 impugned. 



* See Mr. W. S. MacLeay's " Remarks on ihc Comparative Anatomy of 

 N.S. Vol. 9. No. 54-. June 1831. 3 II certain 



