322 THE T^ATURAL HISTOET EEYIEW. 



We conclude tbis notice with the very .significant moral, which 

 Prof. Huxley has attached to his account of the second smaller 

 species of Maerauchenia, and which acquires additional strength now 

 that the true position of the genus is definitely ascertained. " The 

 " genus Maerauchenia^'' Prof Huxley remarks, " alone affords a 

 " sufiicient refutation of the doctrine, that an extinct animal can be 

 " safely and certainly restored if we know a single important bone 

 " or tooth. If up to this time the cervical vertebra? oi MacraueJienia 

 " only had been known, palaeontologists would have been justified 

 " by all the canons of comparative anatomy, in concluding that the 

 " rest of its organization was Camelidan. "With our present knowledge 

 " (leaving Maerauchenia aside), a cervical vertebrsB with elongated 

 " centrum, flattened articular ends, an internal vertebral canal, and 

 *' imperforate transverse processes, as definitely characterizes one of 

 " the Camel tribe as the marsupial bones do a Marsupial, — and indeed 

 " better ; for we know of recent non-marsupial animals with marsu- 

 *' pial bones. Had, therefore, a block containing an entire skeleton 

 '* of Maerauchenia, but shoAving only those portions of one of the 

 *' cervical vertebrae, been placed before an anatomist, he would have 

 " been as fully justified in predicting cannon-bones, bi-trochanterian 

 *' femora, and astragali with two, subequal, scaphocuboidal facets, 

 *' as Cuvier was in reasoning from the inflected angle of the jaw to the 

 " marsupial bones of his famous Opossum. But, for all that, our 

 " hypothetical anatomist would have been wrong ; and, instead of 

 *' finding what he sought, he would have learned a lesson of caution, 

 *' of great service to his future progress." 



