FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 33 



gypsum or plaster-quarries of Paris, and those of Aix in Pro- 

 vence, and many quarries of marle-rocks and molasse in the 

 south of France. Certain portions of the molasse of Switzer- 

 land, and the lignites of Liguria and Alsace, are referrible to 

 the same. As for the fossil bones of England, Italy, and Ger- 

 many, they belong either to an earlier or a later era, — to the 

 ancient reptiles of the Jurassic strata and copper-slate, or to 

 the diluvial formations of the last universal inundation. 



We may, then, fairly suppose, that, at the period when these 

 numerous pachydermata existed, there were not many fertile 

 plains to afford pasture for their support. These plains, too, 

 in all probability, were insulated districts, intersected by those 

 elevated mountain- chains in which we discover no traces of 

 those extinct animals. 



In the same strata with those pachydermatous remains are 

 found the trunks of palm, and many other relics of those mag- 

 nificent vegetable productions which at present are indigenous 

 to tropical climates alone. 



The sea which covered these formations has left extensive 

 depositions, constituting, at a moderate depth, the foundation 

 of our present large plains. It again retired, and left open 

 immense surfaces of soil to a new population, the debris of 

 which abound in all the sandy and loamy strata of every region 

 of the globe which has been subjected to examination. 



To this last tranquil deposition of the sea we must refer some 

 cetacea, very similar to the existing species. Among these an 

 entirely new genus has been discovered, and named ziphius by 

 Cuvier. It contains three species, and approximates to the 

 cachalots and hyperoodontes. 



Among the animals which lived on the surface of this depo- 

 sition, when it became dry land, and whose debris now fill the 

 loose strata of the earth, we find no palaeotheria, or anoplothe- 

 ria, none of the extraordinary and extinct genera contained in 

 the gypseous formations. Still, however, the order pachyder- 

 mata predominates ; but in the gigantic genera of the elephant, 



D 



