56 NEW DOUBTS ON THE FOSSIL DIDELPHIS. 



would have been rather led to suppose that it might be an 

 animal of that class. 



We see from this, adds M. de Blainville, that I ought to 

 persist in retaining the name Amphitherium which I proposed, 

 if only because it has the priority over that of Amphigonus 

 given by M. Agassiz ; and that so much the more, because 

 even if it should be beyond a doubt that these j aws are those 

 of amammiferous animal, I see nothing in them, any more than 

 in their dental system, which could lead to their being ne- 

 cessarily those of an opossum ; for, from the dental system, 

 and especially from the molar teeth, to form conclusions re- 

 specting the rest of the organization, aDd above all as to its 

 marsupial nature, is, as I propose to show in a report which 

 I am about to make immediately to the Academy, to go far 

 beyond what the method of analogy will allow. 



As to the rest, it appears that every one has not regarded 

 the question as so completely solved as our fellow-members 

 have supposed it to be ; since, according to what is reported 

 to me by a zoologist and anatomist, whom, for my own part, 

 I very much regret I do not see among the number of compe- 

 titors for the vacant place in our section, Dr. Buckland has 

 himself offered the problem and the fragments on which it 

 rests, to the investigation of the German naturalists assembled 

 in congress at Fribourg, in Brisgau, in the month of Septem- 

 ber last, which was his intention in bringing them to Paris. 



We may therefore hope that the German zoologists who 

 have seen and studied these enigmatical fossils, co-operating 

 with those who possess or have access to them in England, and 

 the matter being discussed by arguments based upon evident 

 and incontestible facts, it may attain to a demonstration, of 

 what nature is of but little consequence, provided it be satis- 

 factory enough to be admitted, if not generally, at least by all 

 those who, in scientific questions, are so fortunate as to have 

 leisure and the ability to judge without prejudice, but with a 

 knowledge of the cause. 



In conclusion I ought also to announce to the Academy, 

 that the scientific conductor of the English Journal called 

 the ' Athenaeum/ has already laid before his readers the 

 point under discussion, having no doubt but that there 

 will soon be discovered, in the Stonesfield quarries, some 

 fragment that will be sufficiently demonstrative ; and in 

 the mean time he himself proposes, to avoid he says being 

 accused of partiality towards either of the three already 

 proposed, — the name Botheratiotherium for the supposed Di- 

 delphis of the oolite ; so that science is already embarrassed 

 with four or five denominations for an animal, of which our 



