336 GEOGRAPHICAL AKD GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION 



France and England, none of the recent families are indicated. 

 The herbivorous type seerns to be entirely wanting in the European 

 deposits, but in America, the forms that have been described from 

 the Puerco formation of New Mexico as Polymastodon are re- 

 ferred to this type by Professor Cope. Neoplagiaulax, from the 

 basal Eocene beds of France and New Mexico, and its near ally 

 Ptilodus, represent the Jurassic Plagiaulacidae, and appear to effect 

 a partial transition from these to the Pliocene or Post-Pliocene 

 Thylacoleo of Australia. 



The remains of true kangaroos (Macropodidre), some of them, 

 as Palorchestes, considerably exceeding in size the largest of the 

 modern representatives of the family, occur in the newer Pliocene 

 or Post-Pliocene deposits of the Australian continent. Associated 

 with these are a number of remarkable forms whose precise affini- 

 ties still remain to be determined, although in the general character 

 of their dentition they approximate the kangaroos and phalangers. 

 Diprotodon australis, with less disproportionate limbs than in the 

 kangaroos, appears to have exceeded the rhinoceros in size. Of 

 somewhat smaller dimensions are the species of Nototherium. 

 Thylacoleo carnifex, described as ' ' one of the fellest and most 

 destructive of predatory beasts," is held by many naturalists to 

 have been an herbivore. 



Edentata. The animals of this order are at the present day 

 confined almost wholly to the southern continents indeed, it might 

 be said principally to the continent of South America (with Central 

 America), which possesses more than three-fourths of all the known 

 species. Of the five recognised families, the sloths (Bradypodidse), 

 ant-eaters (Myrmecophagidse), and armadillos (Dasypodidse), arc 

 exclusively American ; the aard-varks (with two or three species 

 Orycteropus Capensis, the Cape ant-eater, O. ^Ethiopicus, from 

 Northeast Africa, and a possible third species from Senegal) are 

 African; and the scaly ant-eaters or pangolins (Manididae), both 

 African and Asiatic. The species of the last, some eight or more, 

 are properly referable to a single genus, Manis, although several 

 sections, by some authors considered to be of generic value, have 

 been constituted to receive certain well-marked, but unimportant, 

 peculiarities of structure. The common pangolin (Maiiis penta- 

 dactyla) inhabits the Indian peninsula and the island of Ceylon, 

 sharing in part the distributional area of the Chinese species (M, 



