212 On the Dinothenum G'lganteum. 



rus, to assist in dragging the body out of the water, and also as formidable iu- 

 stniments of defence. 



The structure of the scapula, already noticed, seems to shew that the fore 

 leg was adapted to co-operate with the tusks and teeth, in digging and sepa- 

 rating large vegetables from the bottom. The great length attributed to the 

 body would have been no way inconvenient to an animal living in the water, 

 but attended with much mechanical disadvantage to so weighty a quadruped 

 upon land. In all these characters of a gigantic, herbivorous, aquatic qua- 

 druped, we recognise adaptations to the lacustrine condition of the earth du- 

 ring that portion of the tertiary periods, to which the existence of these seem- 

 ingly anomalous creatures appears to have been limited. 



The head fiofurecl in Plate II. of the Dinotherium Gigan- 

 tcum has been carried to Paris, and submitted to the exami- 

 nation of French naturalists. At a meeting of the Academy of 

 Sciences on the 26th March of the present year (1837), Mr 

 Blainville read a communication detailing his views, in which he 

 says :— 



" The Dinotherium was an animal of the family of the Lamantins or 

 Aquatic Gravigrades, its proper position being at the head of the family, pre- 

 ceding the Dugong, and consequently proceeded by the Tetracaulodon, 

 which ought to terminate the family of the elephants. In a word, the ani- 

 mal, in our opinion, ivas a Dugong wLh tusk-incisors. We must then suppose 

 that it had only one pair of anterior limbs, and five toes on each. As to the 

 supposition that the animal was provided with a trunk, which might be pre- 

 sumed from the great nasal opening, the enlarged surfaces Avhich suiTound it, 

 and the size of the suborbital nerve, as far as it may be judged of from the 

 size of the suborbital hole, we believe that is at least doubtful, and that 

 it is moi-e probable that these dispositions bear relation to a considerable de- 

 velopment of the upper lip, and the necessary modification of the nostrils in 

 an aquatic animal, as is equally the case in the Dugong.'' 



More lately, M. Kaup, the discoverer of the Dinotherium 

 Giganteuni, who, in his work entitled " Das Theirreich," placed 

 this fossil genus in the order Edentata, has reconsidered his for- 

 mer opinion ; and in a letter in the Comptes Rendus for April 

 1837, proposes the following modification of it : — 



" M. Kaup writes that the observations on the Dinotheriiiw, which were 

 presented by Messrs de Blainville, Isodore GeofFroy St Hilaire, and Du- 

 meril, at the meeting of the Academy of Sciences, on the 20ch of March last, 

 had led him afresh to examine the subject ; and hence, thanks to the means 

 of comparison supplied in the superb gallery of Comparative Anatomy, he 

 had been enabled to satisfy himself that the alliances which he had first esta- 

 blished between the animal and the Edentata were grounded upon deceptive 

 appearances. I now recognise, saj's M. Kaup, that the two phalanges which 

 I conceived I might refer to the Dinotherium, belonged to some other animal, 

 which, without doubt, should be classed as a genus approaching to the Pango- 

 lines or Orycteropes ; but in adopting upon this point, the opinion first advanced 



I 



