128 FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



But the most remarkable of this order discovered in those 

 rich depositaries of the earlier works of animated nature, the 

 gypsum-quarries of Paris, was a small species of Sarigue, an 

 animal the family of which is now confined to the tropical re- 

 gions of the New World, and to that newer world, Australasia 

 The reflections of the Baron on this head are so just and strik- 

 ing, that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of a short 

 extract. 



*' The rich collection of the bones and skeletons of an ancient 

 world, which nature appears to have assembled round our city, 

 and reserved for the instruction of the present age, is doubtless 

 a most striking phenomenon. Some new relic is discovered 

 every day; every successive day presents new materials for 

 astonishment, and additional demonstration that nothing which 

 once constituted a part of the past population of our soil 

 constitutes a part of the present. There is little doubt, too, 

 that proofs of this description will multiply in proportion as 

 more interest is taken in, and more attention given to, their 

 production. There is scarcely a single block of gypsum in 

 certain strata that does not contain bones. How many millions 

 of these bones have been destroyed since those quarries first 

 began to be worked, and the gypsum to be used as materials for 

 building ! How many, even at this present moment, may not 

 be destroyed by negligence, and how many, by their minute- 

 ness, may escape the eye of the most attentive collectors ! 

 The fragment in question is a proof of this. The lineaments 

 imprinted in the gypsum are so slight, that it requires the very 

 closest inspection to be enabled to trace them ; and yet how 

 valuable are such lineaments ! They bear the impression of an 

 animal, of which we find no relic elsewhere, in the same district ; 

 of an animal which, buried perhaps for myriads of ages, now 

 re-appears for the first time to the eye of the naturalist." 



The impression of the skeleton was found nearly complete 

 on two stones, one covering the other, and thus dividing it, as 

 it were, between them. The animal is there, or its outlines 



