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consider as unknown, if we must refer them, at all events, to existing 

 analogues, must be sought for in the warm countries. Our unknown 

 fossil ruminants, in part, follow this analogy. The great buffalo of Si- 

 beria can only be compared with the buffalo of the Indies, or amis : in 

 the same manner, it is pretended, that in the elephant of India, and in 

 the rhinoceros of Africa, are to be found the originals of the fossil ele- 

 phant and rhinoceros, with which are found the bones of this buffalo. 

 The elk of Ireland, and the stag of Etampes and of Scania, may indeed 

 be compared with the animals of the cold countries; but they do not 

 approach so near to them, he thinks, as to invalidate his reasoning. 



The facts, then, which are hitherto collected, seem, he thinks, to an- 

 nounce, at least as plainly as imperfect documents can, that the two 

 sorts of fossil ruminants belong to two orders of alluvial deposits, and 

 consequently to two different geological epochs; that the one have been, 

 and are now daily being buried, in the period in which we live ; whilst 

 the others have been the victims of the same revolution which destroyed 

 the other fossils of the loose beds, such as the mammoths, the mastodons, 

 and all the pachydermata, the genera of which now exist only in the 

 torrid zone. 



