SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGY. 559 



scribed species of shells; and Lamarck 28 began 

 a series of Memoirs upon them ; remodelling- the 

 whole of conchology, in order that they might be 

 included in its classifications. And two years after- 

 wards (1804) appears the first of Cuvier's grand 

 series of Memoirs containing the restoration of the 

 vertebrate animals of these strata. In this vast 

 natural museum, and in contributions from other 

 parts of the globe, he discovered the most extraor- 

 dinary creatures: the Palseotherium 29 , which is 

 intermediate between the horse and the pig; the 

 Anoplotherium, which stands nearest to the rhino- 

 ceros and the tapir; the Megalonix and Megathe- 

 rium, animals of the sloth tribe, but of the size of 

 the ox and the rhinoceros. The Memoirs which 

 contained these and many other discoveries, set the 

 naturalists to work in every part of Europe. 



Another very curious class of animals was 

 brought to light principally by the geologists of 

 England ; animals of which the bones, found in the 

 lias stratum, were at first supposed to be those of 

 crocodiles. But in 1816 30 , Sir Everard Home says, 

 "In truth, on a consideration of this skeleton, we 

 cannot but be inclined to believe, that among the 

 animals destroyed by the catastrophes of remote 

 antiquity, there had been some at least that differ 

 so entirely in their structure from any which now 



83 Annales du Museum d'Hist. Nat. torn. i. p. 308, and tha 

 following volumes. ^ Daubuisson, ii 411. 



w Phil Trans. 1816, p. 20. 



