74 MARSUPIALIA. 
molar so small as it must have been in the fossil on that 
supposition. 
Upon the whole, the conclusion that the present Eocene 
tertiary fossil is marsupial is the most probable one, but 
the evidence is insufficient to demonstrate that fact, much 
less the family or genus. 
A record of the slightest mdication of a marsupial ani- 
mal, and especially of an Opossum, or true Didelphys, 
in a tertiary deposit of the Eocene period in this country, 
becomes valuable, if only as an incentive and aid to further 
researches and discoveries, which might place beyond doubt 
so interesting an additional concordance between the Mam- 
malian fossils of that epoch in England and in Continental 
Kurope. 
The circumstances attending the discovery by Cuvier of 
the fossil remains of a small species of Didelphys in the 
gypsum of Paris, furnish so striking an exemplification 
of the power of the principle which guided that great 
anatomist in the interpretation of fossil bones and in the 
reconstruction of extinct animals, that a brief notice of 
them may not be unacceptable, as they are not entirely 
foreign to the present section of the History of British 
Fossil Mammalia. 
The remains in question included a considerable pro- 
portion of the skeleton of a small quadruped, partially 
buried in two portions of a split block of gypsum. 
The impression of the lower jaw indicated, by the ele- 
vation of the coronoid process above the condyle and by 
the backward prolongation of the angle of the jaw, that 
it belonged to a carnassial or ferme animal; but the 
elevation of the condyle above the level of the line of teeth 
excluded it from the true Carnivora, as Dogs, Cats, Bears, 
Weasels, &e., and brought it within the range of the 
