74 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



limbs and feet) were one and the same animal. I was utterly 

 incredulous, and, though scoffing at the idea that an animal with 

 a Perissodactyl skull could have feet which such men as Cuvier 

 had declared to be Edentate, I yet was curious to hear the 

 reasoning which had led to such an impossible result. The 

 reasoning was as follows: No one has ever seen the feet of 

 Chaltcot kef turn t or the skull or teeth of Ancylotherium y yet the 

 two are always associated in the same localities and in the 

 same geological horizons. I admitted the force of these facts, 

 but felt that the structural incongruities involved an insuper- 

 able difficulty in the way of the conclusion drawn from the 

 facts. A few months later I was in Paris and saw the fine 

 mammals which Professor Filhol had just excavated at Sansan, 

 among which was a complete skeleton that demonstrated the 

 correctness of Forsyth Major's view ; it had the skull of 

 Chalicotherium and the feet of Ancylotherium. 



Quite as remarkable is the case of Agriochoerus in this coun- 

 try. The skull was described more than forty years ago by 

 Leidy, and referred to the Artiodactyla ; many years after a 

 fragmentary fore limb and foot were referred by another ob- 

 server to the Carnivora, while a third referred the hind foot to 

 the Ancylopoda. Subsequent discoveries showed that the three 

 supposed genera were one, and that the skull, fore foot, and 

 hind foot, which had been distributed among three mammalian 

 orders, all belonged to the same animal ; nor was this distribution 

 without good excuse. 



Obviously, the guesswork method of restoration must be 

 relegated to the limbo whence it so persistently emerges. In 

 its place we have the plodding, drudging method of finding the 

 bones themselves and not trusting to the imagination for them. 

 Much the most satisfactory way to work is to deal with com- 

 plete individual skeletons, but it is only comparatively seldom 

 that the observer is so fortunate as to have material of this 

 kind. In the great majority of instances the various imperfect 

 specimens must be combined to make one complete one, and 

 to do this, it rarely suffices simply to put together the various 

 bones of different individuals and make a single specimen out 

 of them, for almost always there is some discrepancy of size or 



