ANOPLOTHERIUM AND GIRAFFE. 197 



minant ; tliey had previously ascertained the occiirrence of 

 the same structure in a fossil ruminant from the Sewalik 

 hills. As the Dorcatherium of Kaup breaks down the 

 empirical distinction between the ruminants and pachy- 

 derms, as regards the number of the teeth, so does the 

 Iloschus aquaticus as regards the structure of the feet. 



Giraffe. — In the 7th volume of the ' Journal of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal' (pp. 658-660) is a communication dated 

 'Northern Doab, Jiily 15, 1838,' and intituled, 'Note on a 

 Fossil Ruminant Genus allied to Giraffidce, in the Sewalik 

 hills, by Captain P. T. Cautley.' The specimen referred to 

 in that paper was the third cervical vertebra of a ruminant, 

 which, for the reasons therein assigned, was supposed to have 

 been a giraffe. At that time the authors of the present com- 

 munication had not access either to drawings of the osteology 

 or to a skeleton of the existing giraffe ; but the grounds for 

 referring the vertebra to that genus were, that it belonged to 

 a ruminant with a columnar neck, the type of the ruminants 

 being preserved, though very attenuated in its proportions ; 

 that the animal was very distinct from any of the camel 

 tribe ; that it was in the giraffe that there existed such 

 a form most aberrant from the mean in respect of its great 

 elongation. That the bone belonged to a giraffe was put 

 forth at the time as only a probable inference, and chiefly 

 to serve as an index to future inquiries. 



The authors, having since the former period obtained addi- 

 tional specimens, and had access to the fullest means of 

 comparison, are now able to place on the record of deter- 

 mined Sewalik fossils one very marked species of giraffe, 

 and also indications of a second species, which, so far as 

 the scanty materials go, appears to come near to that of 

 Africa. 



The first specimen to which they refer is the identical ver- 

 tebra noticed by Captain Cautley in 1838. (See Plate XVI. 

 figs. 1-4.) It is an ahuost perfect cervical vertebra. It were 

 needless to enter on the characters which prove it to have 

 belonged to a ruminant. Its elongated form shows that it 

 belonged to one with a columnar neck ; that is to say, either 

 to one of the camel and Auchenia tribe, or to a giraffe, or to 

 some distinct and unknown type. The fossil differs from the 

 vertebra of a camel, 1st, in the position of the vertebral 

 foramina {a, a') ; 2nd, in the obsolete form of the upper trans- 

 verse processes. According to the masterly analysis of the 

 Macrauchenia by Professor Owen, the Camelidce and Macrau- 

 chenia differ from all other known mammalia in the following 

 peculiarity : that the transverse processes of the six inferior 

 cervical vertebrse are without perforations for the vertebral 



