178 SCIENTIFIC LABORS OF EDWARD LARTET. 



it ought, therefore, to be classed with the superior orders of the simian 

 group, which include the orang-outang, the chimpanze, the gorilla, the 

 ape. and the Protopithecus antiquus of Sansan. 



In the same basin of Garonne, M. Lartet discovered a new species of 

 Sirenian fossil, the liytiodus, whose enormously developed incisors seem 

 to be related to the means of defense of the dugong. The classification 

 of the fragments, collected at Sos (Lot et Garonne,) was attended with 

 great dilficulties, which were, I think, very skillfully overcome. 



The collections of our associate iucluded numerous remains of probos- 

 cidian fossils, (dinotherium, mastodon, elephant.) He saw the necessity 

 of settling first their specific characteristics, and then of establishing 

 their stratigraphical age. His undertaking was laudable and of unques- 

 tionable utility, since the teeth of the proboscidians are almost always 

 found in the tertiary and quaternary deposits. It was first necessary to 

 elucidate an obscure system of synonymy; then to show the dental 

 formula of each species, to settle the question of the successive evolu- 

 tion of the teeth ; to fix the time of the fall of the milk teeth, and finally 

 to give the characteristics of the persistent grinders. Such was the work 

 proposed by M. Lartet in his remarkable memoir upon the dentition of 

 the proboscidian fossils, and the stratigraphical distribution of their re- 

 mains in Europe. 



He proves the probable existence of four species of dinotheria, notwith- 

 standing the large number of species described, and in opposition to the 

 opinion (held by several naturalists) of the union of these species into 

 one. A beautiful fragment of a young dinotherium. gave him an oppor- 

 tunity of observing the evolution of the teeth. 



Among the six species of mastodons admitted by him he shows a new 

 form, the Mastodon Fyrenaicus ; the replacement of the teeth iu the 

 mastodons was exhibited to him by the jaw of the Mastodon angus- 

 tidens. Among the elephants he recognizes four species identifying 

 the ElepiMs priscus with the elephant of Africa. 



The appearance of these fourteen proboscidians was anticipated in 

 Europe by that of the rhinoceros. The dinotherium and the mas- 

 todon are found in the miocene period; but, while the dinotherium 

 disappeared or becomes extinct in the miocene, the mastodou died out 

 in the pliocene. The elephant born in the pliocene disappeared from- 

 Europe probably after the establishment of man in that country. 



In 1850, M. Lartet gave, conjointly with M. Gaudry, an account of the 

 fossil fauna of Pikermi. The importance of these collections of M. 

 Gaudry in Greece are now well known ; fifteen species of vertebrates, 

 represented by thirty-three genera, have since been described in his 

 article upon the fossil animals and the geology of Greece, but in ISoG 

 the classification of the fossils had hardly commenced. There were 

 •iumerous remains of monkeys, a careful examination of which proved 

 hat the two species described by Wagner and Eoth, under the names 



