ANOPLOTHEEIUM AND GIRAFFE. 205 



horse, &c., yet no remain lias been found referrible to the 

 Tapir, a fact the more remarkable, inasmuch as one of the 

 only two existing species of that genus is now confined 

 to the larger Indian islands and a part of the adjoining 

 continent. 



The finding of the giraffe as a fossil furnishes another 

 link to the rapidly increasing chain which (as the discoveries 

 of year after year evince) will sooner or later connect extinct 

 with existing forms in a continuous series. The antelope and 

 the bovine and antlered ruminants have numerous representa- 

 tives, both recent and fossU. The camel tribe comprises a 

 considerable fossil group, represented in India by the Camehis 

 Sivalensis, and is closely approached in America by the extinct 

 pachydermatous Macrauchenia. The giraffe has hitherto 

 been confined, like the human race, to a single species, and 

 has occupied an isolated position in the order to which it 

 belongs. It is now as closely represented by its fossil ana- 

 logues as the camel ; and it may be expected that, when the 

 ossiferous beds of Asia and Africa are better known, other 

 intermediate forms will be found, filling up the wide interval 

 which now separates the giraffe from the antlered ruminants, 

 its nearest allies in the order according to Cluvier and 

 Owen.^ 



The giraffe throws a new light on the original physical 

 characters of JSTorthern India ; for whatever may be urged in 

 regard to the possible range of its vegetable food, it is very 

 clear that, like the existing species, it must have inhabited 

 an open country, and had broad plains to roam over. In a 

 densely forest-clad tract, like that which now skirts the foot 

 of the Himalayahs, it woidd soon have been exterminated by 

 the large feline ferse, by the hysenas, and large predaceous 

 bears which are known to have been members of the old 

 Sewalik fauna. 



Postscript. — Since the above remarks were submitted to the 

 Society, M. Duvernoy's paper, embodying two communica- 

 tions read to the Academy of Sciences on the 19th May and 

 27th JSTovember last, has appeared in the January number of 

 the ' Annales des Sciences Naturelles.' These notices were 

 published in the ' Comptes Eendus,' but were unknown to 

 the authors at the time. M. Duvernoy describes the lower 

 jaw of a fossil giraffe found in the bottom of a weU, lying on 

 the surface jpf a yellow clay, along with fragments of pottery 



' M. G. de St. Hilaire, in his zpal for 

 the mutability of species, imagined that 

 he had detected in tlie Sivatherium the 

 primeval type which time and necessity 

 had fined down into the giraffe. Ana- 



tomical proofs were all against this 

 inference ; but if a shadow of doubt 

 remained, it must yield to the fact, that 

 in the Sewalik fauna the Giraffe and the 

 Siyatherium were contemporaries. 



