Miocene Mammalia. 265 



not have been destitute of animal life of -many kinds, 

 both in the waters and on the lands. But on reflec- 

 tion it is not to be wondered at that such remains are 

 absent. In the first place there are no great river 

 deposits of Miocene age remaining in Britain, in which 

 such kinds of organic remains might lie buried, and the 

 only lacustrine strata preserved lie in a small area of 

 a few miles in length at Bovey Tracey. Neither is it 

 likely that bones of mammalia should be found in the 

 thin local soils, of a few inches in thickness, that were 

 formed during the intervals of eruptions on the sides 

 of lofty volcanoes. If, as I believe, a populous 

 mammalian fauna lived and died and left their bones 

 on the land of that old area, these bones decayed, 

 unburied in sediments, and helped to nourish the 

 luxuriant vegetation. But on the adjacent land, of 

 what is now the Continent of Europe, there is no lack 

 of mammalian and other bones to tell us what may 

 have been the kinds of animals that inhabited our 

 now insular area, for in the shallow near-shore deposits 

 of the Faluns of Touraine, we find the Dinotherium, 

 the elephantine Mastodon, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, 

 Dichobune, and Deer, and in the fresh-water Miocene 

 strata of the banks of the Rhine, between Bingen and 

 Basle, a similar assemblage occurs. 



In Switzerland, between the Alps and the Jura, 

 besides fresh-water shells and spiders, and all the tribes 

 of insects of familiar genera, we find Salamanders, 

 Frogs and Toads, Lizards, Crocodiles, Serpents, 

 Tortoises, and Birds. Of the mammalia in the Swiss 

 strata, thirty-eight genera and fifty-nine species are 

 named by Heer, which approach more closely to the 

 Eocene fauna than to that of the present day. Of these, 

 twenty-nine are extinct, and of the remainder only 



