404 NATURAL SCIENCE. June. 



recorded by the publication of a telegram in the Times of April 21, 

 and, judging from the letter, it seems likely to complete our knowledge 

 of the skeleton not only of Diproiodon, but also of other extinct Aus- 

 tralian animals. The bones are said to occur in a salt marsh in a 

 wonderful state of preservation ; but the country is now so hot and 

 arid that the difficulties of digging and transport are very great. 



Diprotodon, it may be explained, was a wombat-shaped animal about 

 as large as a rhinoceros — the largest marsupial hitherto discovered — 

 and, with the exception of its feet, the skeleton is now almost com- 

 pletely known, thanks to the explorations of Dr. Bennett and others 

 and the researches of Sir Richard Owen. The history of the gradual 

 discovery of the animal is one of some interest. The name Dipro- 

 todon was first given by Sir Richard Owen in 1838 to the anterior 

 end of a lower jaw obtained by Sir Thomas Mitchell in the Welling- 

 ton Caves, New South Wales. Five years later, a drawing of part of 

 a jaw with teeth reached England from the same source, and this Sir 

 Richard Owen believed to represent a kind of Dinotheriiun, indicating 

 for the first time the occurrence of primitive elephants in Australia. 

 In the same year, a portion of a molar tooth, associated with the 

 shaft of a femur and other fragmentary bones, was also received, and 

 the same anatomist wrote : " The fossils, which my friend has now 

 transmitted, incontestably establish the former existence of a huge 

 proboscidian Pachyderm in the Australian continent, referable to 

 either the genus Mastodon or Dinothentiin.'" Only a year later, however, 

 these early surmises proved to be incorrect, and within a short time 

 Sir Richard Owen was able not merely to describe most features in 

 the osteology of Diprotodon australis, but also to distinguish another 

 allied genus, Nototherium. The feet alone remained unknown, and 

 parts of these were described in the Philosophical Transactions of the 

 Royal Society in 1886 as the toes of that fabulous monster, the 

 " Great Horned Lizard of Australia " (Megalania prisca, Owen). 

 Complete skeletons, such as Dr. Stirling leads us to expect, will no 

 doubt help much in the determination of minor points and classifi- 

 catory matters ; but the researches of Owen and later authors leave 

 little to be learned about the main features. 



The Earliest Monkeys. 

 In a recent paper on the Eocene Mammals of North America, 

 Messrs. Osborn and W^ortman announce their belief that the 

 European Adapis and certain allied American forms instead of being, 

 as generally supposed, Lenmroids, are really monkeys. The ground 

 for this appears to be that they have normal lower canine teeth, 

 instead of having the first premolar modified to serve this function. 

 We cannot, however, see that this is a valid reason for their separa- 

 tion from the Lemurs, the earlier forms of which, in our view, were 

 probably ancestors of the Monkeys. This, however, we suppose, is 

 nowadays heresy. 



