Reviews—Annals of Museum of Buenos Ayres. 453 
‘the interval between Toxrodon and Macrauchenia is partly filled by 
the newly-discovered Vesodon (p. 299). Seldom has the opinion 
of a Palzontologist on the zoological position of his subject been 
more definitely or more repeatedly enunciated than Prof. Owen’s 
in reference to his Macrauchenia. The perversity with which some 
would exclude every statement save the ‘indication of alliance to 
Camelide given by the cervical vertebre,’ is discreditable. Let 
anyone, for example, with the ‘ Quarterly Journal of the Geolo- 
gical Society,’ vol. iv., 1848, open before him, at p. 139, read the fol- 
lowing passage from the ‘ Zoologie’ of Castelnau’s ‘ Travels in South 
America :’— 
‘ Genre Macrauchenia.—C’étaient des Pachydermes herbivores, 
des Ongulés perissodactyles ; et malgré la ressemblance que la lon- 
gueur de leur cou peut leur faire supposer avec les Chameaux et les 
Llamas, ils appartiennent bien au méme ordre naturel que les Equi- 
dés, les Rhinocéridés, les Tapiridés, les Paléothéridés, et les 
Hyracidés.’ 
M. Paul Gervais, in penning the above, desired it to be supposed 
that Macrauchenia had previously been unnaturally introduced, like 
a ‘supposititious ’ child, into the Artiodactyle group, along with the 
Camel-tribe, and that its position was rectified by the additional 
evidence which he was enabled to adduce from the fossils confided 
to him by Count Castelnau. Reference to the ‘ Zoologie’ of Castel- 
nau’s Expedition, ‘Anatomie,’ 4to., p. 36, shows that these addi- 
tions consist of the ‘carpus,’ with the ‘lower articular surfaces of 
the radius and ulna.’ The figures of the ‘femur,’ ‘tibia,’ and 
‘astragalus, are copied from the ‘ Fossil Mammalia’ of the Beagle. 
The evidence which had been given of the mandibular dentition he 
seems to be unacquainted with. 
M. Gervais further writes—‘ Les vertébres cervicales des Ma- 
crauchénes sont allongées, et rappellent celles des Llamas et des 
Chameaux ; mais on doit remarquer qu’eiles ont, comme celles des 
Rhinoceros et des Tapirs, les deux faces de leurs corps presque - 
planes, et non fortement convexo-concaves, comme celles des Camé- 
lidés, ou mémes des Chevaux.’ (Tom. cit.) This excursion into 
comparative Osteology is not happy. The anterior convexity and 
posterior concavity of the articular surfaces of the bodies of the 3-7 
cervical vertebre and anterior dorsals of all Rhinoceroses and Tapirs 
is an elementary fact: the exceptional character of the almost 
flatness of those surfaces in Auchenia among Ruminants might par- 
donably be unknown to M. Gervais, nor does one look for any 
discussion of the minuter characters of arterial foramina, &c. 
This, however, is quite clear—that Paleontology did not require 
to be told, after 1847, that Macrauchenia ought to be placed with 
Tapirus, Paleotherium, Equus, Rhinoceros, and Hyrax, among the 
Perissodactyle Ungulates. 
What Palzontology did require may be stated to be: confirmation 
of the concurrence of Auchenian cervical vertebre with Perissodac- 
. tyle limb-characters ; confirmation of the concurrence of mandibular 
dentition akin to that of Paleotherium and Rhinoceros, with those 
