Miscellaneous. 329 



no cloven-footed animals that chew the cud (ruminants), no horses, 

 no elephants, no rhinoceros or hippopotamus, and, it is thought, no 

 true cat- or dog-like flesh-eaters. To take their places were strange 

 creatures that combine the characteristics of these divisions now so 

 widely separated. Thus there were forms between the horse and 

 tapir, between the elephant and tapir, and between the rhinoceros 

 and tapir. There were numerous monkeys which resembled nearly 

 as much the raccoon and the coati. The land caniivora resembled 

 in many ways the seals ; and the division of the opossum and the 

 kangaroo had sundry representatives. A more curious and, to some, 

 unexpected faunal combination, constituting a homogeneous whole, 

 does not exist in any known formation. 



In the next period (Miocene) a great addition to the living types 

 of animals took place ; so that the contrast between this formation 

 and the Eocene is very great. A portion of almost any part of the 

 skeleton of a quadruped would thus enable the palaeontologist to de- 

 termine the age of the formation from which it had been procured. 

 Thus ruminating animals exist in the greatest profusion, a few 

 horses appear, two species of elephants (mastodon) are known, and 

 there are a great many species of rhinoceros. The peculiar inter- 

 mediate divisions of the Wyoming beds no longer peopled the land ; 

 the strange beings compounded with the tapir have abandoned the 

 earth in favour of more decided types. One or two tapirs hold over, 

 and one of the anomalous monkeys. The snakes and lizards are 

 nearly the same ; but the crocodiles that swarmed during the Eocene 

 have entirely disappeared. 



If we examine the character of the representatives of living 

 orders in greater detail, we shall find the phenomenon observed in 

 the stnicture of the Eocene quadrupeds repeated, but within a nar- 

 rower limit of variation. Thus the modern ruminants may be 

 roughly stated as belonging to the families of the hogs, camels, 

 musk-deer, and oxen. In the Miocene there are neither oxen nor 

 deer, while many si^ecies in enormous droves present structure of 

 hog, camel, and deer combined, or camel plus musk and hog. 

 The horses had three toes and were more or less like tapirs ; and 

 Bome of the rhinoceroses shared similar peculiarities. One strange 

 set of creatures combined characters of tapir and rhinoceros with 

 those of those Eocene beasts that combined the elephant and tapir. 

 The latter have been called Eohasihus, the former Sijmhorodon. 

 The Eobasileus had three pairs of long horns — the first at the snout, 

 the last on the back of the skull ; the feet were like the elephant's ; 

 and it carried a pair of knife-like tusks. It probably had a short 

 trunk. The l^ymhorodon had feet more like the rhinoceros, but it 

 stood liigli on the legs like the elephant ; the tusks were reduced 

 to a small size, while one pair of horns stood upon the top of the 

 head. Tliey represented the front pair of the Eobasileus, and either 

 stood on the nose or over the eyes. Their shape differed in the 

 different species : in some they were long and round, in others flat ; 

 in others fhcy were three-sided and turned outward. One species 

 had enormously expanded cheek-bones, and was nearly as large as 



