348 PALEONTOLOGY 



of the Manis ; and, " according to all the laws of co-existence, 

 it is impossible to doubt that the most marked relations of 

 the animal that bore it should have been with that genus of 

 quadrupeds."* But what must have been its size 1 The 

 phalanx was not one of the largest on the foot — for it had not 

 those slight raised borders which one sees in the large 

 claw-bones of the Pangolins. This question, which Cuvier 

 answered by the proportions of the short-tailed Manis, at 24 

 French feet, has had a more reasonable reply given to it by 

 certain other bones of the skeleton subsequently discovered in 

 the miocene tertiaries of France. These discoveries have like- 

 wise rectified and moderated the absolute application of the 

 correlative law to the necessary determination of the genus as 

 well as of the order. The relations of the double-jointed and 

 cleft phalanx to the Edentata is beautifully confirmed ; but 

 the additional fossils, and especially some evidences of teeth, 

 have shown that it belonged to a peculiar and now extinct 

 genus intermediate between the Manis and the Oryctcrojms. 

 And these relations are deeply interesting, on account of the 

 geographical position of both those edentate genera, on tracts 

 of land, viz., which are now most contiguous to the continent 

 containing the remains of the extinct osculant genus. 



The locality in France is near the village of Sansan, near 

 Auch, department of Gers, Haute-Pyren^es. The formation 

 is a lacustrine deposit of the miocene period. 



Portions of two molar teeth have been found, 1 inch 8 

 lines in greatest transverse diameter ; the tooth preserving 

 the same size and shape through the whole length of the 

 portion — viz., 1 \ inch. They resemble in shape those of the 

 Orycterope, but are less regular and have not the same tubu- 

 lar tissue. Their microscopic texture appears not to have 

 been analyzed ; it would lie important to determine whether 

 it resembled that of the teeth of the sloths or armadillos. The 



* Ossemcns Fossiles, 4to, t. v., {>t. i., p. 104. 



