VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN 1914 619 



connection mention may be made of a note by Mr. H. Stokes in 

 the Irish Naturalist for the year under consideration (vol. xxiii. 

 pp. 1 13-18) on the mode of occurrence of skulls and skeletons 

 of the so-called Irish elk in the bogs of Howth and Ballybetagh, 

 county Dublin. 



Another contribution to the past history of the deer tribe 

 is made by Mr. E. von Niezabitowski, in the Bulletin of the 

 Cracow Academy for January 1914 (p. 56), on the occurrence 

 of fossil remains of the reindeer in Galicia, and the local forms 

 by which it is there represented. 



From a distributional point of view some interest attaches to 

 the discovery of remains of the musk-ox in the diluvium of the 

 Emschertal, Westphalia, recorded by Mr. P. Kukuk in Zeits. 

 deutsch. Geol. Ges. vol. lxv. pp. 596-600, pis. xix. xx., 191 3. 



Fig. 1. — The hinder left upper and lower cheek-teeth of Homacodon vagans, an 



Eocene Bunodont Artiodactyle. 

 (From Sinclair, Bull. Ame>: Mtis. Nat, Hist.) 



In the same serial tor 1914 (vol. lxvi. pp. 1-33, pis. i.-iii.) 

 Dr. E. von Stromer continues his account of the Tertiary fauna 

 of the Wadi Natrun, in the Fayum district of Egypt, dealing 

 in this instance with remains of hippopotamus from the Middle 

 Pliocene beds. These are identified with Hippopotamus (Hexa- 

 protodon) hipponensis, a species with six lower incisors, originally 

 described by the late Prof. A. Gaudry from the Algerian 

 Tertiary. 



Few groups ot mammals offer greater difficulties to the 

 systematist than the early Tertiary bunodont (i.e. those in which 

 the cheek-teeth are surmounted by simple, cone-like cusps) 

 forerunners of the artiodactyle, or even-toed, ungulates. This 

 is partly due to the close resemblance, inter se, of many of these 

 animals, and in part to the resemblance of their cheek-teeth (fig. 1) 

 in some cases to those of apes and in others to those of early 



