326 PROCEEDINGS OF METROPOLITAN SOCIETIES. 
wards of the inferior angle of the jaw, this animal exceeded any 
other known ungulated quadruped, and approximated the Carnivo- 
ra; in reference to which Professor Owen drew attention to the 
carnivorous propensity of the common Hog, which, of all existing 
genera of Pachydermata, offered decidedly the nearest approach to 
the carnivorous type of structure. The author farther added, as 
a circumstance not devoid of interest, that the Peccaries should now 
be confined, in their geographic range, to South America, where 
the Tapir, the nearest living analogue of the Palxolherium and A- 
noplotherium, still exists ; and concluded by referring the other spe- 
cimens of Mr. Fox’s collection to the species Anoplotherium commune 
and A. secundarium, and Paleotherium medium, P. arassum, P. mi- 
nus, and P. curlum. 
Some remarks were then offered on a jaw found at Binstead in 
1830, and considered to have been allied to the genus Moschus 
among the Ruminantia, but which Professor Owen showed to ap- 
proximate rather to the extinct genus Dichobune of Cuvier, though 
in some respects the fossil also resembled the existing Moschus mo- 
sthiferus : its characters were elaborately described. 
Dr. Mitchell then read a paper “ On the deposit of Blue and 
Brown Clay so extensively distributed over the eastern counties, 
and characterized by containing rounded nodules of chalk, and masses 
of various other rocks and: fossils from nearly every secondary for- 
mation in England.” ‘The chief localities were enumerated near 
which the deposit was stated to occur, as also the principal places 
where the nodules of the several secondary rocks, with their fossils, 
were found to be enclosed ; and the paper concluded with some ob. 
servations on the probable direction of the currents by which this 
important geological deposit was accumulated. 
NovemBeER 21]st.—The greater portion of this evening was taken 
up by a very elaborate paper of Professor Owen, on two jaws of the 
fossil Thylacotherium prevostii (Valenciennes), from Stonesfield.— 
The nature of these remarkable fossils has recently excited so much 
interest, from the importance of the generalizations resulting from 
their determination, that it is, perhaps, needless to premise that the 
discussions which have been lately held respecting them at the 
French Academy, at the meeting of German naturalists last au- 
tumn, and since in this country, originated in a memoir published 
by the eminent successor in the chair of Cuvier, Professor de Blain- 
ville, the object of which was to show that the animals in question, 
the remains of which are imbedded in the oolitic secondary forma- 
tion, did mot pertain to the class Mammalia, to the marsupial divi- 
sion of which they had been referred by Cuvier and others. M. 
Valenciennes had already published an attempted refutation of the 
bold and plausibly supported views of his illustrious colleague ; but as 
the lapse of ages was so immense from the period when these fossils 
were entombed, to that of the tertiary formation, wherein the re- 
mains of mammiferous animals first re-appeared, this circumstance 
alone led many naturalists and paleontologists to regard with much 
Ge 
