36 FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



The bears are not very numerous in the loose strata. The 

 ursus spelaeus is said, however, to be found there, in Austria 

 and Hainault. In Tuscany there is a peculiar species, remark- 

 able for its compressed canines, thence termed U. Cultridens, 

 or Angustidens. Hyaenas are more frequently found in such 

 strata, with the bones of the elephant and rhinoceros. 



It appears, then, that during the era of which we are now 

 speaking, the carnivorous order was numerous and powerful. 

 The rodentia, smaller in general, and more feeble, have not so 

 much attracted the attention of collectors of fossil remains. 

 Still, as we have observed, it has presented us with some un- 

 known species in the fossil state. 



We have now enumerated the principal animals whose re- 

 mains are found in the accumulation of earth, sand, and loam, 

 which cover our large plains, and fill many caverns and fissures 

 of rocks, and have been called diluvium. They decidedly con- 

 stitute the population which occupied our part of the world, at 

 the era of the last great catastrophe which destroyed their races, 

 and prepared the soil on which the animals of our own era 

 exist. Whatever resemblances certain of their species may 

 present to those of our days, it cannot be denied that their ge- 

 neral character was very different, and that most of their races 

 have been annihilated. 



It is, as we before remarked, most remarkable that in all the 

 strata, and among all the fossil remains now enumerated, no 

 relic has been found of man or monkey. Whether these kin- 

 dred orders existed at all during the periods in question, or, if 

 they did exist, where they existed, are points which it is yet 

 impossible to decide. But what is quite certain is, that we are 

 now surrounded by a fourth succession of terrestrial animals, 

 and that, after the age of the reptiles, that of the palaeotheria, 

 and that of the mammoths, mastodons, and megatheria, the 

 age arrived in which the human species, with the aid of certain 

 domesticated animals, has appropriated and cultivated the 

 earth ; and it is only in alluvion, in peat, in recent concretions, 



