4.04 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jone, 
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 Dipyrotodon, but also of other extinct Aus- 
tralian animals. The bones are said to occur in a salt marsh ina 
wonderful state of preservation; but the country isnow 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 Dinotherium, 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 Dinotherium.” 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, Notothevium. 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” (Megalama 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 Earuiest MOnkKEYS. 
In a recent paper on the Eocene Mammals of North America, 
Messrs. Osborn and Wortman announce their belief that the 
European Adapis and certain allied American forms instead of being, 
as generally supposed, Lemuroids, 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. 
