398 



projections, is attended to, it must be plainly seen, that few of these 

 bones, when found, can be extricated from their stony matrix, but with 

 so much injury, as can hardly fail to destroy those parts, the examination 

 of which is necessary to the determination of their characters. The 

 skeletons already noticed, and particularly the two skeletons of the Ano- 

 plotherium, furnished M. Cuvier with that information, however, which 

 rendered his subsequent examination of the separate vertebra more satis- 

 factory than it would otherwise have been. 



There appears to be no room for doubting, that in the Anoplotherium 

 commune, there were seven vertebrae in the neck, twelve or thirteen in 

 the back, six in the loins, three in the sacrum, and twenty-two in the 

 tail. The number of those in the trunk agree with the greatest part of 

 the ruminants ; but those of the tail are much more numerous than are 

 in general seen in this tribe : the kanguroo approaches the nearest in 

 this respect, but it has only nineteen. 



In the lumbar vertebrae of this animal, the anterior articular apophyses 

 are hooked, by which they embrace the posterior apophyses of the pre- 

 ceding vertebrae ; a species of structure which exists, more or less, in the 

 ruminants and in the hog, but not in the horse or tapir. A curiously 

 formed inferior spinous apophysis is observable on some of these ver- 

 tebrae ; respecting the use of which, M. Cuvier hesitatingly queries 

 " Were the inferior muscles of the great tail, which characterizes this 

 animal, inserted there ?" The angular bones were of considerable size 

 in this extraordinary animal, showing that the muscles of the tail were 

 exceedingly powerful. 



In addition to these animals, he obtained from these quarries half the 

 jaw of a small carnivorous animal, and was much surprised at finding 

 that, of the genus Canis, to which it appeared to belong, not the jaw of 

 any species agreed with it. It appears therefore probable, that this car- 

 nivorous animal, like the herbivorous we have been describing, is of a 

 species at present unknown. This would be certain, if the skeletons 



