388 PALAEONTOLOGY 



which those fossils are peculiar. Cuvier places the Elasmo- 

 there between the horse and rhinoceros. The existing four- 

 horned antelopes, like their gigantic extinct analogues, the 

 Sivathere and Bramathere, are peculiar to India. It may be 

 regarded as part of the same general concordance of geogra- 

 phical distribution, that the genus Hippopotamus, extinct in 

 England, in Europe, and in Asia, should continue to be repre- 

 sented in Africa, and in none of the remoter continents of the 

 earth — Africa also having its hyaena, its elephant, its rhino- 

 ceros, and its great feline Carnivores. The discovery of 

 extinct species of Camclopardalis in both Europe and Asia, 

 of which genus the sole existing representative is now, like 

 the hippopotamus, confined to Africa, adds to the propriety 

 of regarding the three continuous continental divisions of the 

 Old World as forming, in respect to the geographical distribu- 

 tion of pliocene, post-pliocene, and recent mammalian genera, 

 one great natural province. The only large edentate animal 

 [Pangolin gigantesque, Cuvier ; Macrotlicrium, Lartet) hitherto 

 found in the tertiary deposits of Europe, manifests its nearest 

 a trinities to the genus Manis, which is exclusively Asiatic 

 and African. 



Extending the comparison between the existing and the 

 latest of the extinct series of Mammalia to the continent of 

 South America, it may be first remarked that, with the 

 exception of some carnivorous and cervine species, no repre- 

 sentatives of the above-cited mammalian genera of the Old 

 World of the geographer have yet been found in South 

 America. Buffon* long since enunciated a similar generali- 

 zation with regard to the existing species and genera of 

 Mammalia; it is almost equally true in respect of the fossil. 

 Not a relic of an elephant, a rhinoceros, a hippopotamus, a 

 bison, a hyaena, or a lagomys, has yet been detected in the 

 caves or the more recent tertiary deposits of South America. 

 * Histoire Naturelle, torn, ix., p. 13, 4to, 1758. 



