MAMMAMA OF EOCENE PERIOD. 75 



Carnivora — the Gallinaceous birds were controlled by the 

 Accipitres. 



" Le Regne Animal, a ces epoques reculees, etait com- 

 pose d'apres les memes lois; il comprenoit les m^mes classes, 

 less memes families que de nos jours; et en effet, parmi les 

 divers systemes sur I'origine des etres organises, il n'en est 

 pas de moins vraisemblable que celui qui en fait naitre suc- 

 cessivement les differens genres par des developpomens on 

 des metamorphoses graduelles." (Cuvier, Oss. Foss. t. 3, 

 p. 297.) 



This numerical preponderance of Pachydermata, among 

 the earliest fossil Mammalia, beyond the proportion they 

 bear among existing quadrupeds, is a remarkable fact, much 

 insisted on by Cuvier; because it supplies, from the relics of 

 a former world, many intermediate forms which do not oc- 

 cur in the present distribution of that important Order. As 

 the living genera of Pachydermata are more widely sepa- 

 rated from one another, than those of any other Order oi 

 Mammalia, it is important to fill these vacant intervals with 

 the fossil genera of a former state of the earth ; thus supply- 

 ing links that appeared deficient in the grand continuous 

 chain which connects all past and present forms of organic 

 life, as parts of one great system of Creation.* 



* An account lias recently been received from India of the discover}' 

 of an unknown and very curious fossil ruminating animal, nearly as large 

 as an Elephant, which supplies a new and important link in the Order of 

 Mammalia, between the Ruminantia and Pachydermata. A detailed de- 

 scription of this animal his been published by Dr. Falconer and Captain 

 Cautley, who have given it the name of Savitherium, from the Sivalic or 

 Sub.Himalayan range ofliills in which it was found, between the Jumna 

 and the Ganges. In size it exceeded the largest Rhinoceros. The head 

 has been discovered nearly entire. The front of the skull is remarkably 

 wide, and retains the bony cores of two short thick and straight horns, 

 similar in position to those of the four-horned Antelope of Hindoostan. 

 The nasal bones are salient in a degree without example among Rumi- 

 nants, and exceeding in this respect those of the Rhinoceros, Tapir, and 

 Palffiotherium, the only herbivorous animals that have this sort of struc- 



