TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 621 



In the extension of our knowledo^e of the Ancylopoda,'" an order of mammals 

 named after the Anci/lothermm of Pikermi and Samos, which occur in the Early 

 Tertiary deposits of Europe, Asia, North America, and abundantly in Patagonia, ^^ 

 we have been made aware of the existence of genera whose salient structural 

 features combine the dentition of an ungulate with the possession of pointed 

 claws, believed to have been retractile like those of the living cats. Conversely 

 to these unguiculate herbivores, which include genera with limbs on both the 

 artio- and perisso-dactyle lines, there have been found, among the so-called 

 Mesonychidpe. undoubted primitive carnivores, indications of a type of terminal 

 phalanx seal-like and approximately non-unguiculate ; ^^ from all of which it is 

 clear that we have in the rocks the remains of forms extinct which transpose the 

 correlations of tooth and claw deducible from the living orders alone. Further, 

 among the primitive pentadactyle Carnivora we meet, in the genus Patriofelis, 

 with a reduction of the lower incisors to two, and characters of the fore limb 

 which, with this, suggest the seals. '^ It is, however, probable that these characters 

 are in no way indicative of direct genetic relationship between the two, for, in- 

 asmuch as these animals were accustomed to seek their food in the water of the 

 lake by which they dwelt, their seal-like characters may be but the expression of 

 adaptation to a partially aquatic mode of life — of parallelism of modification with 

 the seals and nothing more. 



Early in the history of their inquiry, our American confreres recorded from 

 the Pliocene the discovery of camel-like forms possessed of a full upper incisor 

 dentition ; for example, the genera Frotolahis and Ithygrammodon ; -'' and now 

 they have arrived at the conclusion that while the camels are of American origin 

 one of their most characteristic ruminants, the Prongbuck (Antilocapra), would 

 conversely appear to be the descendant of an ancestor {Blastomery.v) who migrated 

 from the old world. 



Sufficient this concerning the work in mammalogy of the American palaeon- 

 tologists. While we return them our devout and learned admiration, we would 

 point out that the brilliance of their discoveries has but beclouded the recognition 

 of equally important investigations going on elsewhere. In Argentina there 

 have proceeded, side by side with the North American explorations, researches 

 into the Pleistocene or Pampa fauna, which in result are not one whit behind,^' 

 as has been proved by the recognition of a whole order of primitive ungulates, 

 the Toxodontia,'-- by that of toothed cetaceans with elongated nasals, as in the 

 genera Pros^qualodon and Argyrocetus, and of sperm whales with functional 

 premaxillary teeth, viz., Physodon and Uypocetus, to say nothing of giant 

 armadillos and pigmy glyptodons.-^ 



It will be remembered by some present that, from Patagonian deposits of 

 supposed Cretaceous age, there was exhibited at our Dover meeting the skull of 

 a horned chelonian Miolania, which animal, we were informed, is barely 

 distinguishable from the species originally discovered in Lord Howe's Island, and 

 Queensland, and which, being a marsh turtle highly .specialised, would seem 

 in all probability to furnish a forcible defence for the theory of the antarctic 

 continent.-* But more than this, the results of renewed investigation of the 

 Argentine beds by the members of the Princeton University of North America 

 have recently resulted in collections which, we are informed, seem likely to 

 surpass all precedent in their bearings upon our current ideas, not the least 

 remarkable preliminary announcement being the statement that there occurs 

 fossil a mole indistinguishable, so far as is known, from the golden mole 

 {Chrysochloris) of South Africa.--' 



Before I dismiss this fascinating subject let me disarm the notion, which may 

 have arisen, that the paLieontological work of the old world is done. Far from 

 it ! Even our American cousins have to come to us for important fossil forms ; 

 as, for example, the genus Pliohyrax of Samos and the Egyptian desert,-'^ while 

 among the rodents and smaller carnivores there are large collections in our 

 national museum waiting to be worked over afresh. 



If one part of the globe more than another is just now the centre of interest 

 concerning its vertebrate remains, it is the Egyptian desert. Here there have 



