FOSSIL AND EECENT LAGOMORPHA. oil 



spongiose os tymj)anicum with the petrosum), the Lagomyidge are more modernized than 

 the Leporidge. 



If we take for a gnide the gradual metamorphosis of their upper cheek-teeth, the order 

 of succession in Lagomyidse is : Titauomijs, I'rolagus, Lagopsls, Lagomys. Lafjonii/s is 

 clearly the offspring of Lago2)sis ; but Lagopsis cannot be descended from Prolagiis, the 

 latter having lost the last lower molar (m. 3), which is present in Lagopsis {and Zagomgs). 

 Lagopsis must have taken its origin from a form with upper cheek-teeth like or nearly 

 like those of Frolagus, but provided witli a lower m. 3, a hypothetical " Frolayopjsis " 

 descended from Tiianomys or some closely related form with persistent lower m. 3. In 

 Titanomys {!'. visenoviensis) there is already the beginning of the tendency to the loss 

 of this tooth. Frolag/is equally descends from a Titauoinys-like form, and has continued 

 without much change from the Middle Miocene to the present era, since it still lingered 

 in Corsica at the Neolithic period. 



Titanomys 



{Prolarjoiis'is) Prolafjvn 



La 



f/O/K 



Laijo)a 1/s 



Leporidcc. — Apart from attempts to separate the Eabbit as a genus from the rest of the 

 Leporida\ which have not, however, met wdth common assent, the family has pretty 

 generally been considered to be composed of one recent genus only, Lepus. In 181'5, Blyth 

 proposed a new genus Caprolagiis, for Pearson's Lepus Mspidns*. The appropriateness 

 of this generic distinction has been contested by Hodgson and by "VVaterhouse. The 

 former, omitting to take into consideration the remarkable configuration of the skull of 

 the Hispid Hare, pointed out, that " In the Timid and Red-tailed Hares the long ears, 

 the large eyes, the frame as well suited to extreme speed as the eyes and ears to effective 

 vigilance, are certainly in remarkal)le contrast wdth the small eyes and ears, heavy frame, 

 and short equal legs of the Porest Hare : but all these distinctions, as well as those of 

 domicile, become less and less tangible in the Variable Hare, the Rabbit, the Tolai and 

 the Tapiti, in wdiich moreover we have variously reproduced, even to tlie subordinate 

 peculiarities of the Indian Porest Hare, such as its white flesh, its short tail, its 

 subterranean retreat and creeping adhesion thereto, so unlike the dashing career of the 



* E. Blyth, " Description of Caprolagus, a uew Genus of Leporine Mammalia ; with two plates." Journ. As. Soo, 

 Bengal, xiv. i. pp. 247-24U (184.5). 



