XVil- INTRODUCTION. 
from all known existing quadrupeds. By these restora- 
tions the Naturalist was first made acquainted with the 
aquatic cloven-hoofed animal which Cuvier has called Ano- 
plothere, and with its light and graceful congeners, the 
Dichobunes and Xiphiodon, with the great Palzotheres, 
which may be likened to hornless Rhinoceroses, with the 
more tapiroid Lophiodon, with the large peceari-like pachy- 
derm called Cheropotamus, and with about a score of 
other genera and species. 
Long before any discovery had been made of remains 
of terrestrial Mammals in-the contemporary London and 
plastic clays, the existence of neighbouring dry land had 
been inferred from the occurrence, in those deposits, of 
bones of crocodiles and turtles, and from the immense 
number of fossil seeds and fruits, resembling those of tre- 
pical trees, as pandani, cocoa-nuts, &c. 
The remains of a few of the Mammals of the ancient 
palm-groves that bordered the mighty eocene river or estu- 
ary, have since been recovered from its sediments. One 
of these quadrupeds is a Lophiodon, another a nearly allied 
pachyderm (Coryphodon) larger than any existing tapir ; 
a third (/yracotherium) has the closest affinity to the 
Cheropotamus, but was not much larger than a hare. 
In a sandy deposit, probably near the margin of the 
estuary, and where Kingston in Sussex now stands, the re- 
mains of a smaller species of Hyracothere, about the size of 
a rabbit, have been found: and both here and in the eocene 
clay at Sheppey, and at Bracklesham, vertebra of large ser- 
pents like the Boa Constrictor have been discovered. The 
combination of organic remains in these vast accumulations 
of the detritus of the eocene continent is, in fact, quite ana- 
logous to what may be expected to be found in the out- 
pourings of the Ganges or the Amazon, when those sedi- 
