AMPHITHERIUM. 29 
INSECTIVORA. AMPHITHERUD. 
Fig. 15. 
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AMPHITHERIUM PREVOSTII. 
Genus. AMPHITHERIUM. 
Ir the genera of Jnsectivora now represented by living 
species have hitherto yielded very few additions to the cata- 
logue of British fossils—but one new species of mole, and 
no lost shrew, or hedgehog, having been well authenticated 
from any of our recent tertiary formations —the Order 
has assumed a more than common importance in the eyes 
of the Geologist, by the strange and unexpected forms 
of small quadrupeds referable thereto, which have been 
detected in strata, far more ancient than any heretofore 
known to have concealed relics of animals so highly 
organized as the Mammalia. 
The insect-eating quadrupeds may be the rarest, but they 
unquestionably include the most ancient of Mammalian 
fossils ; for, if the pedimanous Cheirotheria have failed to 
endure the test of later scrutiny, the most rigid criti- 
cism has but tended to rivet more firmly the links which 
attach the Amphitheria and Phascolotheria to the Mamma- 
lian series. 
The rare and interesting fossils on which those genera have 
been founded, which have been the subjects of such close 
and repeated examination, which have exercised the diseri- 
