CORYPHODON EOCANUS. 305 
which it passes in a state of quiet lethargy, and seeks its 
food only by night. With the exception of the Hog, it 
seems to be the most truly omnivorous of the tribe of 
animals to which it belongs; for scarcely anything comes 
amiss to its ravenous appetite. Its most common food is 
vegetable, and consists of wild fruits, buds, and shoots.”* 
The abundance and variety of the fossil remains of fruits, 
most of them of a tropical character, which have been 
obtained from the same deposits of eocene clay as that 
which has yielded the subject of the present section, be- 
speak the extent and nature of those dark and dense pri- 
meval forests in which the Coryphodon obtained its sub- 
sistence. In size, the ancient British Tapiroid quadruped 
must have surpassed the largest Tapir of South America, 
or Sumatra, by one-third. The unique fossil specimen 
which has led to its determination, was dredged up from 
the bottom of the sea, between St. Osyth and Harwich 
on the Essex coast, and now forms part of the interesting 
and instructive collection of my esteemed friend, John 
Brown, Esq., of Stanway Green, near Colchester. The 
specimen is petrified, and heavily impregnated with me- 
tallic salts; it presents the usual rich deep brown colour 
of the fossil bones of the London clay: the pyritic matter 
which sparkles in the cancelli of the bone, and which lines 
the pulp-cavity of the broken molar tooth, leaves no room 
for doubt as to the fossil having been originally imbedded 
in that eocene tertiary formation of the Harwich coast. 
* ¢QGardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society delineated,’ Svo, vol, i. 
p. 202. 
+ See Mr. Bowerbank’s interesting work on the Fossil Fruits of the London 
clay, 8yo. Van Voorst. 
