476 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



fact that the very wealth of individuals and species brings one into 

 confusion when forming phylogenetic trees. When there were fewer 

 known, this seemed a comparatively easy matter, but the discovery of 

 more complete material and of hitherto unknown forms nearly always 

 destroys hypothetical genealogies and shows that they are only ap- 

 proximations to the truth. 



If we class Dromomeryx with the existing CervidcB it agrees with 

 the Telemetacarpalia in possessing the distal ends of the lateral meta- 

 carpals. This group, according to Matthew, includes all of the 

 Cervidcz of the new world. If Matthew's contention" be true, that 

 Leptomeryx, Blastovieryx, Mazama, Odocoilciis, and the large Nearctic 

 Cervidae are structurally and genetically connected, and were separated 

 from the Cervidse of the Old World ; then there is no reason to believe 

 that Dromomeryx, the affinities of which are doubtful, has any very 

 intimate connection with European forms. It seems to the writer more 

 probable, then, that instead oi Dromomeryx furnishing any evidence of 

 Miocene migration from Europe to America, it was derived from some 

 unknown forms either from America, or from some other region out- 

 side of Europe ; though, of course, the fossils that have been re- 

 covered from the most favored regions represent only a fraction of 

 the many forms that lived in these regions, so that we cannot depend 

 too much upon negative evidence. 



Geological Relations of Dromomeryx. 



In Volume XX of the American Naturalist (1886, pp. 368 and 369) 

 Cope gives lists of the faunae of the Deep River beds of Montana and 

 of the Cottonwood Creek (Mascall) beds of the Miocene of Oregon, 

 both of which he includes in his Ticholeptus beds. Blastomeryx 

 borealis is the only name common to these two lists. Professor W. 

 B. Scott, however, doubts the specific identity of the specimens from 

 the two localities. He says: "The presence of Blastomeryx vfO\i\d 

 of itself be insufficient for the correlation of the two localities, but the 

 identification of the species is not at all certain. Besides certain minor 

 differences in the teeth, the limb bones from the Oregon beds indicate 

 the existence there of two species, both of which are heavier than the 

 Montana forms and more like others from the Loup Fork of Kansas." ^® 



^T /but., pp. 546, 556, etc. 



•**"The Mammalia of the Deep River Beds," Trans. Amer. Pliilos. Soc, Vol. 

 XVII, 1893, p. 60. 



