ON BRITISH FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 57 



the legitimacy of their approximation to the Cheiropterous order at all*. 

 Since, however, an anatomist so familiar by his recent researches with all 

 the modifications of the teeth of the Mammalia has been unable to refer the 

 fossil molars in question to any of the terrestrial or aquatic genera of Insec- 

 tivora, but has given my figures of these molars a place in the plate illus- 

 trating the ancient Vespertiliones in his ' Osteography,' I deduce from that 

 fact additional confidence in my original determination. It is to the grinders 

 of a tropical species of Molossus, in the collection of Mr. Cuming, that the 

 present British fossils make the nearest approach. 



Order Insectivora. 

 Genus Talpa. 



Moles have been introduced into the retreats of owls and other birds of 

 prey, and these remains have been detected in the earth at the bottom of 

 caves, as in that at Pavilandf, but these cannot be regarded as true fossils. 



The almost entire skeleton, figured as a Saurian in the ' Geology of Bacton,' 

 by Mr. Green, unquestionably belongs to the genus Talpa, as I have ascer- 

 tained by examination of the characteristic humeri, which in the figure 

 alluded to are placed so as to correspond with the coracoid and pelvic bones 

 of Saurians. This mole's skeleton was discovered in a lacustrine deposit 

 consisting of a greenish kind of mud intermixed with sand, underlying a 

 stratum of bluish mud, with patches of brown clay, itself covered by the 

 hard ferruginous crag and the superficial till. 



The associated skeleton I of a quadruped, combining a dentition like that 

 of the ruminants, with, apparently, a divided metacarpus and metatarsus, as 

 in the Anoplotherhim gracile, would indicate this formation to belong to the 

 older tertiary series ; but of this I shall be enabled to speak with more cer- 

 tainty, after a personal examination of the fossil and strata previous to the 

 preparation of that part of the present report which will treat of the herbivo- 

 rous Mammalia. 



Genus Sorex. 



Fossil remains of shrew-mice have been found in the bone-cave at Kent's 

 Hole § ; in the collections of bones in the raised beaches near Plymouth, 

 and in other recent formations : they offer no evidence of species distinct 

 from those now existing in Great Britain. 



Genus Amphitherium. 



The mammalian fossils which have excited most interest, and been the 

 subject of closest examination and warmest discussion, are the small jaws 

 from the oolitic calcareous slate at Stonesfield near Oxford, first indicated 

 as evidence of the mammalian class by Dr. Buckland, in his celebrated 

 paper on the Megalosaums, published in 1823 in the ' Transactions of the 

 Geological Society of London,' vol. i. 2nd series, p. 399 ; and there referred, 

 on the authority of Cuvier, to the genus Didelphys. 



A statement of so much importance as that of the existence of the remains 

 of a terrestrial mammal in a secondary formation, much lower than the 

 chalk, excited, as might be expected, much scepticism and close inquiry, 

 first, in regard to the geological relations of the alleged oolitic stratum, and 

 next as to the zoological affinities of the fossils. 



* Osteographie des Cheiropteres, p. 93, pi. xv. fig. ix. 

 t Reliquiae Diluvianas, p. 93. 

 % Green's Geology of Bacton, plate ii, pp. 13-18. 



§ As they have likewise been found in the cave at Kostritz, and in the bone-caves of 

 Belgium. 



