SPALACOTHEKIUM 315 



of such application, and because mistakes have been made 

 through a miscalculation of the value of such amount, it has 

 been argued that a rational law of the correlation of animal 

 forms is inapplicable to the determination of a whole from a 

 part ; * and it has not only been asserted that the results of 

 such determination are unsound, but that the philosopher who 

 believed himself guided by such law deceived himself and 

 misconceived his own mental processes ! f But the true state 

 of the case is, that the non-applicability of Cuvier's law in 

 certain cases is not due to its non-existence, but to the limited 

 extent to which it is understood. 



The consciousness of that limitation led the enunciator of 

 the law to call the attention of palaeontologists expressly to 

 the extent to which it could then be applied, as, for instance, 

 to the determination of the class, but not the order ; or of the 

 order, but not the family or genus, etc. ; and to caution them 

 also as to the extent of the cases in which, the coincidences 

 being only known empirically, he consequently enjoins the 

 necessity of further observation, and of caution in their induc- 

 tion. Cuvier expresses, however, his belief that such coin- 

 cidences must have a sufficient cause, and that cause once 

 discovered, they then become correlations and enter into the 

 category of the higher law. Future comparative anatomists 

 will have that great consummation in view, and its result, 

 doubtlessly, will be the vindication of the full value of the law 

 in the interpretation of fossil remains as defined by the illus- 

 trious founder of palaeontology. 



Genus Spalacotherium, Ow. — The next stratum overlying 

 the older oolites in which mammalian remains have been 

 detected, is a member of the newest oolitic series at Purbeck, 

 Dorsetshire, called the " marly " or " dirt-bed." In a series of 



* De Blainville, Osteograpbie, 4to, fasc. 1, 1839, p. 34. 

 f Prof. Huxley, " Lecture on Natural History," etc., Royal Institution of 

 Great Britain, Feb. 15, 1856. 



