19 



well described as " small but exceeding wise." They differ so 

 much from all their contemporaries that the majority of 

 naturalists have agi'eed to leave them in a group by themselves 

 (Hyraxcoidea). Many divergent lines sprang from the 

 Cretaceous first ungulates, of which, however, only three main 

 off-shoots, the proboscidian, the odd-toed, and the even-toed 

 ungulates " remain unto this day," the last and most modern 

 being now the prevailing type. The general ancestors of these 

 primeval hoofs {protungulata) must be sought at least as far 

 back as the Permian in a group called by Huxley Rypotheria, or 

 *' the animals beneath." These root mammals possessed 

 vertebrae concave at both ends, like those of fishes. They were 

 small animals with little brain power, and five free toes on each 

 foot. 



Not so very long ago mammalian life was thought to begin 

 in the lower Tertiaries, or, at the earliest, in the Purbeck strata. 

 Now there are quite a number of known Triassic and Jurassic 

 mammals. Professor Marsh has the remains of a large number 

 of species chiefly from the American Jurassic beds in his collec- 

 tions at Yale. They are for the most part of small size, and are 

 believed to belong to the insect-feeding group of mammals. The 

 complete elucidation of their structure will form another interest- 

 ing volume of that history of the evolution of vertebrate life on 

 the American continent to which Leidy, Cope, Marsh, Scott, and 

 Osborn have made successive contributions. Verily these 

 American s"ientists and explorers follow worthily in the footsteps 

 of Cuvier, of Owen, of Huxley, and Falconer, in thus making 

 " these dry bones live.^' I would express in conclusion (said 

 Miss Crane) a fervent hope that such as these may ever be the 

 sole " bones of contention " between the English and American 

 peoples. 



AN INDIAN PUZZLE, 



BY 



MR. J. LEWIS, F.S.A. 



Mr. Lewis called attention to a large drawing of a piece of 

 wrought iron, somewhat of the shape of a flattened Roman amphora, 

 which he had prepared in illustration of the subject of his paper. 



