5 oo THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. ' 



and their neighbors. If this supposition be permissible, then a further 

 stage still awaits our intellectual journey in the search after the origin 

 of the elephant races. In the Eocene rocks of Xorth America occur 

 the fossil remains of some extinct quadrupeds, of which the Dinoceras 

 is the best-known form. These animals unite in a singular fashion the 

 characters of elephants and ordinary "hoofed" quadrupeds. "While 

 they possessed horns, they also developed tusks from the eye-teeth ; 

 and, from a survey of their complete organization, Professor Marsh 

 tells us that the position of these unique quadrupeds is intermediate 

 between the elephants themselves and the great order to which the 

 hoofed quadrupeds belong. Dinoceras and its neighbors precede the 

 dinotherium and mastodon in time, and this fact alone is important 

 as bearing on the assumed relationship of these forms. 



It may thus at present be assumed with safety that the evolution 

 of the elephants has taken place from some ancient Eocene quadruped 

 stock, represented by the Dinoceras group, which belongs to no one 

 group of living quadrupeds, but is intermediate in its nature, as we 

 have already observed. From some such stock, then, we may figure 

 the dinotherium and mastodon races to have been in due time evolved. 

 The 2s ew World, in this light, must have been the birthplace of the 

 elephant hosts ; for the Dinoceras and its neighbors are of North 

 American origin ; migration to the Old "World having taken place by 

 continuous land-surface then existent, and the further evolution of the 

 living species and their fossil neighbors having occurred in the Eastern 

 hemisphere. Thus, once again we arrive at the existing races of ele- 

 phants. These are simply the survivals of an ancient line of quadru- 

 peds, whose history is simply that of every other living being animal 

 or plant a history which, like the unfolding of a flower, leads us from 

 form to form, along pathways of variation and change, and which, at 

 last, as the ages are born and die, evolves, from the buried and forgot- 

 ten races of past monsters, the no less curious and unwieldy quadruped 

 giants of to-day. Bdgravia. 



-+++- 



THE CHEMISTEY OF SUGAE. 



By Professob HAEVEY TT. WILEY. 



THE annual consumption of sugar by the people of the United 

 States amounts to more than forty pounds per capitum. This 

 gives as a total the enormous quantity of two billion pounds per 

 annum. The cost of this commodity may be safely placed at eight 

 cents a pound. The total value of the sugar consumed each year, 

 therefore, is one hundred and sixty million dollars. Sugar is a theme 

 of general and pecuniary interest, which is a sufficient excuse for an 

 article on its chemistrv. 



