CHAP, ii.] THE LOWER EOCENE MAMMALIA. 27 



of a peccari, and a form intermediate between that of 

 the hog and the hyrax or coney. Both occur in the 

 Woolwich and Eeading series of the Table (p. 16), at 

 Kyson in Suffolk. The Pliolophus of the London Clay 

 is closely allied to the latter, while the Coryphodon from 

 the same stratum resembled a tapir in its dentition and 

 skeleton. 



In the corresponding strata in France two * beasts of 

 prey of decided marsupial affinities are met with, the 

 Arctocyon primcevus, the most ancient of the Tertiary 

 mammals of Europe, allied to the bears in the structure 

 of its teeth, and to the marsupials in the low organisation 

 of its brain, and the Palceonictis, with teeth resembling 

 those of the Tasmanian dasyure, and in size rivalling the 

 wolverine or glutton. The latter may very well be taken 

 to be the type from which the family of Civets have 

 been derived. The tapir-like Coryphodon also inhabited 

 the lower Eocene land of France, Switzerland, and North 

 America. 2 



These animals constitute a small and insignificant 

 fragment of a fauna, the ancestry of which is to be 

 looked for in the Cretaceous age. They are of pecu- 

 liar interest, because they show that at this time the 

 carnivores were intermediate in character between the 

 marsupials and the placental mammals. 



1 Gervais, Zool. ei Pal. Franc. Gaudry, Les Enchainements du Monde 

 Animal. 



2 The discoveries made in New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah, by 

 Professor Marsh and others, prove that the Coryphodon was an inhabitant 

 of America, and that the animal was a five-toed tapiroid animal possessed 

 of all the characters of the sub-order Perissodactyla. See Marsh, Amer. 

 Jour. Sc. and Arts, xiv. July 1877. 



