G. NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 30 1 



more varied. Quite a number of large species of fossil mam- 

 malia have been described by Professor Cope, and doubtless 

 others yet remain to be discovered. 



FOSSIL SIRENIANS IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



The first evidence of the existence of fossil sirenians in Great 

 Britain was presented by Professor Flower at the late meet- 

 ing of the Geological Society in the form of a species of Ha- 

 litherium, called by him II. canhami. It was part of the col- 

 lection of crag fossils gathered by the Rev. H. Canham from 

 the Red Crag, near Wood bridge, in Suffolk. 12 A, Novem- 

 ber 6, 1873, 13. 



EMBRYOLOGY OF THE LEMURS. 



M. Milne-Edwards has recently investigated the embryol- 

 ogy of the lemurs, and finds the placentation of these animals 

 to be quite distinct from that of the Quadrumana, to which 

 order they have been heretofore referred. The resemblances 

 are to the Carnivora. Hence Professor Milne-Edwards is in- 

 clined to regard them as a distinct order between the two 

 mentioned. This conclusion as to their affinities is a highly 

 interesting confirmation of the view recently expressed by 

 Professor Cope, in Hayden's Geological Survey of the Terri- 

 tories for 1872, that the quadrumanous genus Tomitherium, 

 discovered by him in the Wyoming tertiary, combined equal- 

 ly the characters of the coati and the kinkajou (South Amer- 

 ican Carnivora) with those of monkeys. Thus the study of 

 the skeleton of vertebrates foreshadows the results derived 

 from the soft parts. 



GENESIS OF THE HORSE. 



Professor Marsh, in the American Journal of Science for 

 March, presents a communication upon certain fossil equine 

 mammals from the tertiary formation of the West, in which 

 he throws some new light upon the much-vexed subject of 

 the genealogy of the modern horse. In reference to this point, 

 he remarks that the American representative of the modern 

 horse is the extinct IJquus fratermis of Leidy, a species al- 

 most if not entirely identical with the Old World Equus ca- 

 ballus of Linnaeus, to which the present species belongs. 



The line of succession of the European horse has been pre- 



