370 PALEONTOLOGY 



equalling or surpassing the finest that have been observed 

 within the historical period. 



Fig. 127 represents one of a pair of antlers from the bed 

 of the Boyne at Drogheda, now in the museum of Sir Philip 

 Egerton, Bart., which measures 30 inches in length, and sends 

 off not fewer than fifteen branches or " snags." a is the 

 " brow-snag," which rises immediately above the " burr ;" 

 b the second, c the third, and cl the " crown" or terminal cluster 

 of snags, which gave to the deer developing them at the period 

 of his full perfection the title of " crowned hart." 



The little roebuck, like the red-deer, appears from its fossil 

 remains to have continued to exist from the prehistorical 

 pleistocene times to the present period. 



Order Carnivora. 



The quadrupeds which subsist by preying upon others 

 co-existed under corresponding varieties of form, and in ade- 

 quate numbers, with the numerous and various Herbivora 

 of the newer tertiary periods. A brief description has already 

 been made of some of the singular forms, the genera of which 

 are extinct, that lived in eocene and miocene times. 



Genus Galecynus, Ow. — In 1829 the fossil skeleton of a 

 Carnivore, of the size of a fox, was discovered by Sir Eoderick 

 I. Murchison in the pliocene schist of (Eningen. On a close 

 comparison of this specimen, the writer finds that the first 

 premolar is smaller, and the third and fourth larger than in 

 the fox, and all the teeth are more close-set and occupy a 

 smaller space than in the genus Canis; the bones of the feet 

 are more robust ; and these, with other characters, indicate an 

 extinct genus intermediate between Canis and Vivcrra* The 

 unique specimen is now in the British Museum. 



Genus Felis, L. — As it is by this form of perfect Carnivore 

 that Cuvier chiefly illustrated his principle of the correlation 



* Sec Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. iii., 1847, p. 55. 



