82 THE BRITISH MAMMALS PAST AND PRESENT. 



one of the Hyaenodontidae ; a Platychcerops, which seems to be an 

 Esthonyx, or, at least, to resemble that genus very closely, one of 

 the extinct order of Tillodonts, which appear to have been ancestral 

 Rodents ; two species of Hyracotherium, about as large as a hare 

 and with affinities to the tapirs ; two species of Coryphodon, which 

 were not unlike bears, with feet like those of the elephant, the genus 

 being well represented in the Eocene of North America ; and, in 

 addition to these, as a reminder of the early importance of the 

 marsupials, there is an opossum, Didelphys colchesteri, of the same 

 genus as that of the existing North American forms. 



In the Middle Eocene we get Lophiodon, of the same family as 

 Hyracotherium, one of those tapir-like animals, which seem to be the 

 ancestral types from which are descended the modern solid-hoofed 

 ungulates, like the horse and the rhinoceros. At this period the 

 climate of what is now the Isle of Wight and its neighbourhood 

 would seem to have been a warm one, to judge from the vast array 

 of remains of tropical plants, giving a flera of much the same aspect 

 as that of South America and the Malay Peninsula, to which the 

 existing tapirs are confined. 



In the Upper Eocene, including the beds of the Hampshire 

 basin, the Headon, Osborne, Bembridge, and Hempstead (or Ham- 

 stead) series, generally grouped as Oligocene, in which the conditions 

 of deposit were more favourable, we meet for the first time with a 

 really rich fossil mammalian fauna. In them we have our first and, 

 as yet, only lemur, Adapts magna, allied to the lorises but differing 

 from them in having an additional premolar. The insectivores are 

 represented by two species of hedgehog (Neurogymnurus major and 

 N. minor], and by the closely allied Microchoerus erinaceus ; and the 

 carnivores by the semi-aquatic Hyanodon minor and Pterodon 

 dasyuroides, and by a civet, Viverra hastingsice. The rodents are 

 represented by Theridomys aquatilis, and the ungulates by about a 

 dozen genera, including the small and slender Dichodons (Dichodon 

 cuspidatus and D. cervinus); two species of Anoplotherium (A. 

 commune and A. secundarium), a genus exclusively European, dis- 

 tinguished by having neither horns nor claws, and having three toes 

 and a long tail ; two of Xiphodon, another long-tailed genus in which 

 the toes were only two in number ; one species of Dacrytherium (D. 

 ovinuni), differing from the rest of the family in having a lachrymal 

 fossa ; one species of Diplopus, known only by its legs and vertebrae ; 

 three species of Hyopotamus, which, like the next, and almost iden- 

 tical genus, had four toes on each foot, instead of two as in Diplopus; 

 three species of Anthracotherium ; a species each of Chceropotamus 

 (C. gypsorum) and Elotherium (E. magnum], still more pig-like in 

 their affinities; five species of Palcsotherium (P. magnum, P. medium, 

 P. crassum, P. annectens, and P. minus), a three-toed genus with a 

 much longer neck than is given in the usual restorations ; and, to 

 end this list, an Anchilophus desmarssti, belonging to the same 

 family. Add to these the first rorqual, Balcenoptera juddi, from the 

 Brockenhurst beds, which is, however, not the first British whale, 

 that honour being at present held by Zeuglodon -wanklyni, of the 

 lower-lying Barton Clay, the representative of a different sub-order, 

 in which the teeth, unlike those of living whales, are divisible into 

 incisors, canines, and molars. Our Upper Eocene mammals, it 



