Prench National InstUuie. i^j 



fofiri a complete hedcf, see'm to have belonged to i. much 

 larger species than we are acquainted with ; and M. Fischer, 

 who discovered this animal, has given it the natne of tro- 

 gontherium, which M. Cuvier adopts as the specific name. 



Bones of herbivorous animals have also been found iri 

 schists. Three kinds have been described. M. Cuvier saw 

 the figure of one which some authors regarded as having ap- 

 pertained to an Indian boar, and others to a polecat. M. Cu- 

 vier rather gives it the character of a herbivorous animal; but 

 he ha§ not oeen able to ascertain the genus nor species. 



Among the fossil bones of ruminating animals found 

 in loose strata, M. Cuvier has recognised a kind of elk 

 different from that with which we are now acquainted. The 

 bones of this animal have been found in England and 

 Ireland, near the Rhine, and in the environs ot Paris, in 

 beds of marl at no great depth, and they seem to hav^; 

 been deposited in fresh water. Some horns discovered in 

 abundance in the neighbourhood of Etampes, in sand sur- 

 mounted by limestone of fresh water formation, prove the 

 existence of a small species of rein-deer which seems no 

 longer to exist. M. Cuvier has besides observed remains 

 of horns of goats, fallow-deer and stags^ which do not 

 seem to differ essentially from the horns of the existing 

 species : " Nothing," says our author, " is more abun- 

 dant : all the recent alluviations dug up have furnished 

 theni ; and if we do not find plenty of testimony as to these 

 fossil bones, it is because from presenting themselves at 

 trifling depths they have not been thought worthy of 

 much notice.*' 



In the fossils of ruminating aiiimals with hollow horns, 

 M. Cuvier has recognised crania of aurochs, disaovered" 

 in the banks of the Rhine and the Vistula, in the envi- 

 rons of Cracow, in Holland, and in North America. These 

 crania exceed in size those of the aurochs; but, as M. 

 Cuvier observes, this difference may be ascribed to the 

 abundance of food which these animals formerly possessed, 

 when ranging at pleasure through the vast forests and paij- 

 turages of France and Germany. 



There is another kind of fossil cranium differing only 

 from our present oxen from the size, being larger and the 

 horns being in a different direction. These crania have 

 been found hi the vallev of the Somnie, in Suabia, Prussia, 

 England, and Italy. " If we recollect," says M. Cuvier^ 

 ** that the ancients distinguished in Gaul and Germany two 

 kinds of wild oxen, the urus and the bison; may we not 

 suppose that one vf the two, after furnishing our present 



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