256 Professor Owen, on the Ruminant Quadrupeds, [May 2, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 2. 



The Duke of Northumberland, K.G. F.R.S. President, 

 in the Chair. 



Professor Owen, F.R.S. 



On the Ruminant Quadrupeds and the Aboriginal Cattle of 

 Britain. 



The speaker introduced the subject of the Ruminant order of 

 quadrupeds, and the source of our domesticated species, by some 

 general remarks upon the classification of the class Mammalia, and 

 on the characters of the great natural group defined by Ray and 

 Linnaeus as the Ungulata, or hoofed mammalia. 



These are divisible into two natural and parallel orders, having 

 respectively the Anoplotherium and Palceotherium as their types, 

 which genera, as far as geological researches have yet extended, 

 were the first, or amongst the earliest, representatives of the 

 Ungulata on this planet. 



The brilliant researches by Baron Cuvier, the founder of 

 palseontological science and the reconstructor of those primeval 

 hoofed animals, from fragmentary fossil remains in the gypsum 

 quarries at Montmartre, were alluded to. 



Diagrams of the entire skeletons of the anoplotherium and 

 palaeotherium were referred to, in illustration of their dental and 

 osteological peculiarities. 



The Anoplotherium, with the typical dentition of 



. . 3-3 . 1-1 7 4-4 , 3-3 .. 



incisors - — -, canines . — -, premolars - — -, molars - — - = 44, 

 0"~o 1 -^ 1 4— -4 o — o 



had all its teeth of the same length, and in a continuous unbroken 

 series : this character is peculiar to man in the existing creation. 

 The PalcBOtherium, with the same dental formula as the Anoplo- 

 therium, had the canines longer than the other teeth, and developed 

 into sharp-pointed weapons ; necessitating a break in the dental 

 series to receive their summits in closing the mouth. 



The anoplotherium had 19 vertebrae between the neck and 



