Palaeontology. 69 



without supposing that, at the eocene period of the tertiary epoch, the 

 very clay on which London now stands was in the condition of a nascent 

 spice-island, its shores covered with basking reptiles, and the adjacent 

 lands waving with cardamoms and palms, and thuias and cypresses, with 

 monkeys vaulting and gamboling upon their branches, and gigantic ser- 

 pents entwined around their trunks ; the seas also swarming with sting- 

 rays and saw-fishes, with chiuiaeras and enormous sharks ? for all these, 

 together with countless shells of pearly nautili, occur among the fossil re- 

 mains of the numerous extinct species of fishes, which, during the early 

 ages of the tertiary period, crowded the tepid seas of our now humid and 

 chilling climate. 



Mr Owen has also determined the character of a new genus of pachj'- 

 dermatous animal {Hyotherium) intermediate between the Hyrax, hog, 

 and Chseropotamus, found in the London clay at Heme Bay, near Mar- 

 gate, by Mr Richardson. 



Mr Lyell having submitted to Mr Owen some fossil teeth from the red 

 crag of Newbourne in Suffolk, they proved to be referable to the leopard, 

 bear, hog, and a large kind of deer, and afford the first example of mam- 

 malian remains being found in England in any of those divisions of the 

 crag which Mr Lyell, in a paper already alluded to, has ascribed to the 

 miocene period : these genera are known to occur in the miocene for- 

 mations of France and German}-. The numerous mammalia in the fluvio- 

 inarine crag of Norwich are decidedly of a later date ; among these Mr 

 Lyell enumerates the teeth and jaw of Mastodon longirostris, a tusk of an 

 elephant with serpulse attached, and bones of a horse, hog, and field- 

 mouse ; there occur bones of birds, many fishes, and numerous shells, 

 partly marine, and partly fresh-water and terrestrial. 



The recent discoveries in Brazil by Dr Lund of extinct mammalia, that 

 probably lived in some late portion of the tertiary epochs, form a new 

 and important chapter in palaeontology. The largest of these are refer- 

 able to more gigantic forms than at present exist of families now peculiar 

 to South America — e. g. to sloths and armadillos ; just as most of the 

 fossil mammalia of New Holland belong to families and genera which are 

 still peculiar to that country. In a paper on one of these animals from 

 Buenos Ayres, Mr Owen has shewn that the bony armour, which several 

 authors have referred to the megatherium, belongs to the glyptodon, an 

 animal allied to the armadillo, and of which a head containing teeth, and 

 attached to a tessellated bony covering of the body and tail, resembling 

 those of an armadillo, has been lately found near Buenos Ayres, and is 

 figured by Sir Woodbine Parish in his interesting work on that country, 

 J 838. 



The Glyptodon differed from the megatherium in the structure and 

 number of the teeth, and from all known armadillos in the form of the 

 lower jaw, and the presence of a long process descending from (he zygo- 

 ma ; and approached in both these respects to the megatherium. Tin 

 teeth differ from those of armadillos, in having two deep grooves both 



