FOURTEENTH LECTURE. 



NORTH AMERICAN RUMINANT-LIKE MAMMALS, 



W. B. SCOTT. 



In palaeontology, as in other lines of inquiry, the progress 

 of discovery calls for frequent revision of opinion and changes 

 of standpoint. In all kinds of investigation, the steps of which 

 cannot be rigidly demonstrated, but depend upon the accumu- 

 lation of evidence and the balancing of probabilities, it some- 

 times happens that obscure and difficult problems are suddenly 

 lighted up by a new discovery, which gives a totally new and 

 unexpected aspect to the subject. I have come here this even- 

 ing to make public recantation of some of the errors which I 

 lately upheld, having had my opinion completely changed by 

 the force of new evidence, which has led to some very surpris- 

 ing: results. This new evidence consists in the fossil mammals 

 lately collected in the Uinta and White River formations, by 

 Mr. Hatcher for the museum of Princeton University, and by 

 Messrs. Wortman and Peterson for the American Museum of 

 Natural History in New York. 



The Uinta fauna is a most interesting transitional one, which 

 is still very imperfectly known, but every new collection made 

 of it increases our appreciation of its supreme importance, for 

 by its aid one phyletic series after another is being completed. 

 These series have a far-reaching significance for all departments 

 of morphology, for they bring before us what we have every 

 reason to regard as the actual steps of descent, and thus enable 

 us to learn exactly what kinds of evolutionary changes do take 

 place. The Uinta beds have a comparatively limited geographi- 

 cal extent, and have been found only in the basin south of the 

 Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah and northwestern Colo- 



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