MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. 79 



those now living in slight peculiarities, chiefly of dentition. 

 Bears, badgers, hyaenas, and feline animals ; moles and other 

 insectivores ; otters and weasels ; the wolf and dog, then 

 roamed for prey as now ; besides an extinct felina, the 

 machairodus, possessing teeth like curved saws. England 

 had beavers and bears, little different from living species; 

 only, one of the former family was of huge bulk. We also 

 had the hippopotamus and rhinoceros. Oxen, deer, camels, 

 etc., inhabited the great zoological province with which we 

 are connected ; and monkeys and apes passed far beyond the 

 tropical regions to which they are now confined. In India, 

 besides the pachyderms of the European eocene, there were 

 ruminants in abundance (including an extraordinary one, of 

 huge bulk, named the Sivatherium), carnivores, rodents, and 

 insectivores. Here also were monkeys, of unusual bulk ; but 

 the most wonderful animal as yet discovered in this region 

 was a tortoise, not distinguishable in any point of structure 

 from a land species now living, but reaching the surprising 

 length of eighteen feet. The discoveries among the tertiaries 

 of South America have been of a not less interesting cha- 

 racter, in as far as they equally show an approach to the 

 existing zoological characters of that region. Dr. Lund, a 

 Danish naturalist, presents us with a monkey, indicating the 

 features of the platyrrhine or New World group ; and the 

 edentate order, which is still more peculiar to that region, is 

 there preceded by examples of vast size. In the megatherium, 

 megalonyx, scelidotherium, and mylodon, we have a family of 

 sloths, of elephantine magnitude, which lived by breaking 

 down and eating trees. The toxodon surprises us not less, 

 being an equally huge member of the rodent order, that 

 order which now includes most of the smallest quadrupeds. ( 41 ) 

 One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary 

 formation remains to be noticed, the prevalence of volcanic 

 action at that era. In Auvergne, in Catalonia, near Venice, 

 and in the vicinity of Rome and Xaples, lavas exactly re- 

 sembling the produce of existing volcanoes are associated 

 and intermixed with the lacustrine as well as marine tertiaries. 

 The superficies of tertiaries in England is disturbed by two 



