May 1 6, 1889] 



NATURE 



57 



that was not the " Hendon disease" of Prof. Brown, but 

 which was associated with throat illness among consumers 

 of the milk of the affected cows — ^just such a cow malady, 

 in fact, as the Medical Department stated could have, 

 and had, existed without recognition by veterinary 

 surgeons. 



SKELETON OF PHENACODUS. 



A LL readers of the American Naturalist must be 

 -^*- familiar with a striking woodcut of the entire 

 skeleton of a peculiar fossil Ungulate, which occurs 

 throughout a long series of numbers among the adver- 

 tisements, and bears the following somewhat startling 

 subscription, viz. " The five-toed horse — the ancestor of 

 lemurs and man." This fisrure we are enabled, throuerh 



the courtesy of Prof Cope, to reproduce in the accom- 

 panying woodcut. The name given by its describer. Prof. 

 E. D. Cope, of Philadelphia, to the animal of which the 

 skeleton is so marvellously preserved, is Phenacodtis 

 primavits ; the genus forming one of the best-known 

 representatives of that very curious extinct group of 

 generalized Ungulates for which the Professor has 

 proposed the name Condylarthra. 



Till quite recently those zoologists who have not enjoyed 

 the good fortune of visiting the United States have been 

 acquainted with this remarkable and unique fossil only 

 by description and figures ; the largest figure being the 

 fine plate in Prof Cope's magnificent quarto work on the 

 " Tertiary Vertebrata of the West," published a few years 

 ago by the United States Government among the Reports 

 of the Geological Survey of the States. Some months 

 ago, however, the Keeper of the Geological Department 



The Skeleton oi i'henacodus priinavns; from the Wasatch Eccene of Wyoming. One-seventh natural size. (After Cope.) 



of the British (Natural History) Museum entered into 

 negotiations with Prof Cope, to whom this priceless 

 specimen belongs, with a view to obtaining a plaster 

 model for exhibition in the pateontological galleries of 

 the Museum. Fortunately these negotiations have been 

 attended with success, and all students of Mammalian 

 osteology ought certainly to pay a visit to the Museum in 

 order to see this beautiful cast, which is now mounted in 

 its place, and is, we will venture to say, of far more value 

 to the student than many of the real but fragmentary fossil 

 specimens for which large prices have been paid. We 

 may indeed congratulate the popular Keeper of the Geo- 

 logical Department in not hesitating to pay what we 

 believe was a somewhat heavy price for the acquisition of 

 this cast. 



No figures could, indeed, possibly give an adequate 

 idea of the marvellous state of preservation of the original 



specimen ; and we must confess that personally we totally 

 failed to acquire a conception of the real size of the 

 specimen till we were brought face to face with the cast. 



The original skib was obtained some years ago by Mr. 

 J. L. Wortman from the Wasatch Eocene of the Big- 

 Horn basin in Northern Wyoming, and was subsequently 

 transferred to the collection of Prof Cope, of which it is 

 one of the chief gems. The Wasatch beds, it may be 

 observed, are low down in the Eocene, and when v.'e con- 

 sider that so many of even the Upper Eocene Mammals 

 of Europe are known only by isolated and often imperfect 

 skulls, teeth, or limb-bones, we are struck with the mar- 

 vellous preservation of the American form. The dimen- 

 sions of the slab are about 49 by 28 inches ; and Prof. 

 Cope describes the animal as intermediate in point of 

 size between a sheep and a tapir. The animal lies on its 

 right side, with the tail bent suddenly down behind the 



