PALEONTOLOGY SINCE CUVIER. 55 



merely to the objects found in the lake-dwellings, 

 the pea-ore and molasse strata of his native country, 

 for in his monographs, referred to above, he gene- 

 rally makes use of all the available material in the 

 European collections. 1 We would mention together 

 with Kiitimeyer two French naturalists, Albert 

 Gaudry and Filhol, both of whom have, as it were, 

 been forced by their important discoveries to come 

 forward with imposing proofs for the theory of 

 descent. It is more than twenty years since the 

 publication of Gaudry 's work on the fossils of 

 Pikermi. 2 Pikermi is the name of a hamlet on the 

 road between Athens and Marathon, near which, 

 in the deposits of a mountain stream which at one 

 time rushed along there, are found an incredible 

 accumulation of vertebrates, more especially of 

 mammals belonging to the upper Tertiary period. 

 In summing up the results of his investigations 

 Gaudry gives his readers a picture of a tertiary 

 landscape and its forms of life, which we cannot 

 resist quoting word for word, as an example of how 

 our imagination should, in all cases, weave single 



1 We must also mention here his extremely instructive paper 

 on Die Herkunft unserer Thierwelt (1867), although for us nowa- 

 days it certainly presents considerable gaps. 



2 Animaux fossi les et gfologie de VAttique (1862). 



