PALEONTOLOGY. 421 



One of the most celebrated palaeontologists in the domain 

 of fossil Mammalia was Riitimeyer, 1 in Bale. His works 

 cover a wide field of research and hold a high place in the 

 literature. Some of the best known are his monographs on 

 the fauna of the lake-dwellings (1862), his contributions to 

 the Comparative Odontography of the Ungulata (1863), his 

 memoirs on the genealogy of the Mammalia (1867), his 

 discussion of the affinities between the Mammalia of the Old 

 and New Worlds (1888), and his Contributions to a Natural 

 History of the Ruminants (1865), of Oxen (1866-67), an d 

 of Deer (1881). Riitimeyer is a convinced although cautious 

 adherent of the Darwinian theory of evolution. His genea- 

 logical trees of the Mammalia show a complete knowledge 

 of all the data concerning the different members in the suc- 

 cession, and are amongst the finest results hitherto obtained 

 by means of strict scientific methods of investigation. 



In Great Britain, Buckland provided in his Reliquice Dilu- 

 viancz (1823) the earliest general account of the Mammalian 

 remains in the caves and the Diluvial deposits of that country. 

 After the production of Owen's Natural History of the British 

 Fossil Mammals and Birds in 1846, that observer was uni- 

 versally recognised for nearly half a century as the greatest 

 living authority on Mammalia. Throughout his long and 

 active career, Owen contributed an extensive literature on 

 British, Australian, South American, and Asiatic fossil mam- 

 mals. Special interest was aroused by his memoir in 1891 

 on the oldest known Mesozoic forms, from the Stonesfield 

 and Purbeck horizons of Jurassic rock. Another zealous 

 British palaeontologist was Dr. Falconer, whose Fauna Siva- 

 lensis (1846-49), written in collaboration with Cautley, 

 disclosed a new and extremely rich Mammalian fauna from 

 the younger Tertiary deposits of India. After Dr. Falconer's 

 death, Charles Murchison collected several of his important 

 memoirs on fossil Rhinoceroses and Proboscideans, and pub- 

 lished them posthumously in one volume (1868). In more 

 recent years, Busk, Flower, Lydekker, Boyd Dawkins, and 



1 Ludwig Riitimeyer, born on the 26th February 1825, at Biglen, in the 

 Emmen Valley, the son of a pastor, studied at first theology, then medicine, 

 at Bern University, but showed a preference for geology, zoology, and 

 palaeontology. In 1853 he was appointed extra-Ordinary Professor of 

 Comparative Anatomy in Bern, and in 1855 Professor of Zoology and 

 Comparative Anatomy at Bale; he died at Bale on the 2fth November 

 1895- 



