BALASNODON PHYSALOIDES. 541 
the embryos of existing Ruminants feebly and evanescently 
manifest im the dark womb, by their upper incisors, their 
divided cannon bones, and hornless foreheads, the mature 
and persistent characters of their ancient predecessors the 
Anoplotheria, so may the equally ancient Whales of the 
eocene seas have retained and fully developed those max- 
illary teeth which are transitory and functionless in the 
existing species. 
On this supposition of the relation of the above-de- 
scribed fossil teeth to the tympanic bones in the Crag at 
Felixstow, the proportions in which they are there found 
would indicate that the teeth were less numerous in the ex- 
tinct Cetaceans, from which they have been derived, than 
they are in the Cachalot. The recent Ziphius of the Se- 
chelle Islands has but a single tooth on each side of the 
lower jaw when full-grown, like the great Delphinus bidens 
of our ownseas. But the light of these analogies can give 
but a dim and distant view of the actual generic characters 
of creatures, whose former existence is revealed to us by 
a few fragments of their fossilized skeletons, which have 
been bruised and worn by ages of elemental turmoil. It 
may be surprising to many, but not more surprising than 
gratifying, that the means of investigation at present at 
our command enable us satisfactorily to determine from 
such fragments, not only the kingdom of Nature, but the 
class and the order to which they belonged. They fur- 
ther prove that those ancient Mammals of the deep 
appertained to the carnivorous section of Cetacea in the 
Cuvierian system. And if, as is probable, the Whales’ 
form of ear-bone and the Cachalot’s character of tooth 
were combined in the same individual, a distinct family 
of Carnivorous Cetacea must be established for the eocene 
fossils, which would form an interesting transitional link 
