HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



]27 



its' structure implied. These last animals, however, 

 were perhaps more abundant in what was then 

 Erance than in England. Some of them were very 

 small, not much larger than a rabbit, whilst the 

 largest certainly did not stand higher than three or 

 four feet. They usually frequented the marshy 

 places, and were very fond of wallowing in the mud. 

 Like their relatives first mentioned, they had 

 various zoological peculiarities, among which was 

 the additional relation to the modern camel. The 

 Choropotamus, or "river hog," was also a genus of 

 the thick-skinned tribe, and stood really as a link 

 between the Anoplotherium and the modern Peccary. 

 Its habits, however, were not so harmless, as its 

 teeth indicate a tendency to carnivorous habits. 

 The Dichobune—so called from the deeply-cleft 

 nature of its teeth— was allied to the group I am 

 describing. The Hyanodon was a truly carnivorous 

 animal, its jaws being even better adapted for 

 cutting flesh than those of the modern feline tribe. 

 In some parts of Europe there abounded an animal 

 called Anthracotlierium from its remains occurring in 

 the peat-bogs or lignite beds of this age. Like 

 that just described, it was of flesh-eating habits, as 

 was also another, very nearly allied to the modern 

 weasel. I have not time to notice the birds aud in- 

 sects of this period — suffice it to say that the latter 

 included forms now to be met with only in tropical 

 districts. But I hope I have been successful 

 in showing the peculiarities about the terrestrial 

 animals, and you will have no difficulty in seeing 

 how important these extinct types are to the 

 naturalist, in enabling him the better to fill up his 

 natural history plan. These " missing links " thus 

 connect groups of living animals which otherwise 

 would never have been harmoniously blended. It 

 is the moral of Mirza's vision over again — the 

 extinct forms have fallen through the trap-holes of 

 the great viaduct of life, whilst only the recent 

 forms have arrived safely at the other side ! 



You will have seen that, as far as it goes, the 

 testimony of the mammalia is supplementary to 

 that of the vegetation, &c., all tending to prove what 

 I first stated, — that a tropical climate ruled in 

 English latitudes during the Eocene period ! The 

 evidence of the marine organisms (with which, of 

 course, I am better acquainted) is exactly to the 

 same point. Just as the Tertiary epoch is remark- 

 able for its large introduction of higher types of 

 animal life, so it is also for the greater influx of 

 genera, animal and vegetable, of living types. For 

 the first time, among shell-fish, you recognize in the 

 fossils of these deposits, forms which are common 

 in existing seas. But it is not in British latitudes, 

 but in tropical, that you meet with living genera 

 allied to the fossil. The old Nautilus still kept its 

 place, and several species lived in English seas, 

 although it is now scantily represented only in the 

 Indian Ocean. Huge Volutes, beautiful Cones, 



Mitres, Terebella, Bostellaria, Typhis, &c, abounded; 

 and the very mention of these names at once con- 

 veys to the mind of the conchologist ideas of tropi- 

 cal seas. The fish which lived in the same seas 

 were also of a type commoner to warmer areas than 

 to ours. Many species of sharks, some of them, as 

 for instance Carcharodon, being of immense size. 

 Turtles lived in these seas aud bred there, for cara- 

 paces of all sizes, from the juvenile to the adult, are 

 deposited in that part of the mass to which I belong 

 forming the Essex cliffs. As you are well aware > 

 the turtles are now almost entirely confined to the 

 tropical and sub-tropical districts. 



You see, therefore, that I have abundant evidence 

 for warranting me in my statement that at the time 

 I was born a tropical climate prevailed here. What 

 it was before I cannot say, but I know that even 

 before the close of the Eocene period, this warmth 

 had already decreased very considerably. You will, 

 of course, remember that between the beginning 

 and close of this period there had elapsed time 

 sufficiently long to enable more than two thousand 

 feet of material to accumulate. The changes which 

 took place in the physical geography meantime were 

 very great. I am speaking of a time when those 

 high mountains, the Alps and Pyrenees, had not 

 been elevated— nay, when the rocky material now 

 forming a portion of their flanks, was being de- 

 posited along the sea-floor ! 



In England and France, marine conditions had 

 gradually given place to lacustrine, and large lakes 

 had occupied the area previously covered by the sea. 

 During the time that these changes were going on, 

 the climature was slowly toning down. The fossil 

 vegetation met with very abundantly in strata of 

 Upper Eocene age in Hampshire, show you this 

 very plainly. Although it includes types now pecu- 

 liar to warmer regions, it is not so plainly tropical. 

 The succeeding age, the Miocene, bears out what I 

 say, and from the period of my birth until the pre- 

 sent, the register of the climature is very faithfully 

 kept in the strata of the earth. 



NOTES ON "^ECOPHYLLA SMARAGDINA" 

 OF INDIA. 



npHIS ant, which is found throughout the North- 

 ■*• West Provinces of India, is about the size of 

 the one found in woods in England, which makes 

 the large loose heaps of fir spines, &c, and which 

 attacks so fiercely when disturbed. It is of a 

 yellow-brownish colour, and the male, whose body 

 is much more slim and pointed than that of the 

 workers, is of a greenish colour ; whence the name. 

 It may be described as an arboreal ant, as it lives 

 chiefly in trees, and is constantly to be seen run- 

 ning rapidly on the trunk or amongst the leaves. 

 In some notes, which were published last year by 

 the Zoological Society in their Transactions, on the 



