134 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL soctety. [Nov. 3, 
‘Tableau du nombre des vertébres dans les Mammiféres” in the richly- 
stored posthumous edition of Cuvier’s ‘Lecons d’ Anatomie Com- 
parée’ (t. i. 1836, p. 182), we find the Wild Boar (Sanglier) put down 
for d, dorsal, 14, and J, lumbar, 5, which is = 19; the Peccary for 
the same; the Babiroussa and Wart-hogs for d 13, 16, =19; the 
Hippopotamus for d 15,74, = 19; the Reindeer and the Giraffe for 
d 14,15, = 19; the majority of typical Ruminants for d 13, J 6, 
= 19; the aberrant Camelide for d 12,17, still=19. The Ame- 
rican Bison, which has 15 pairs of ribs, has but 4 lumbar vertebree ; 
the Aurochs, which has 14 pairs of ribs, has 5 lumbar vertebre ; the 
Buffalo, which has 13 pairs of ribs, has 6 lumbar vertebree: these 
facts are full of significance. 
If we refer to the descriptions of those fossil Ungulates whose entire 
skeletons have been best restored, we shall find that the same law of 
conformity of vertebral structure prevailed in the most ancient of 
those mammals as in the existing species. The artiodactyle Anoplo- 
therium, like the Megaceros, had d 13, 1 6, = 19 ; the perissodactyle 
Paleotherium had d 16, 1 7, = 23, or the same number of dorso- 
lumbar vertebrz as the Indian Tapir has*. The leading modifica- 
tions of the Ruminant-stomach have been long known to and demon- 
strated by me in my Hunterian Lectures. Mr. Cooper has kindly 
furnished me with the following extract from the notes which he took 
of my Lecture on the Stomachs of Mammalia delivered at the Royal 
College of Surgeons June 7, 1838 :-— 
“Lastly we come to Ruminants, which present three forms of 
stomach, always complicated :— 
“Ist. In the genus Moschus, or small Musk-deer, we find three 
cavities, with a small intercommunicating canal between the second 
and third; the linmg membrane of the first is simply papillose+. 
“9nd. In the Camel: three cavities, with a small intereommuni- 
cating sac between the second and third; the interior of the first 
sacculated. 
‘* 3rdly. In the Horned Ruminants, the stomach is divided into 
four distinct compartments.” 
These modifications and the observed act of rumination in a Kan- 
garoo, which has also a very complex, but a differently constructed 
stomach from that of the Ruminants, long since led me to attach less 
importance than it had usually received to the Ruminant-stomach, as 
proving the order called Ruminantia to be peculiarly natural and 
* Individual varieties in the number of the dorso-lumbar vertebre occasionally 
occur in the same species, independently of the less important difference in the 
number of free or confluent ribs: thus the Human subject has sometimes d 12, 
16, = 18; and Mr. Eyton (/. c.) has recorded one instance of d 15, 16, = 21, inan 
English domestic boar. 
fT Sir Everard Home, in the chapter of his ‘ Lectures on Comparative Anatomy’ 
which treats of the intestines of quadrupeds, speaks incidentally of a small Deer 
from Prince of Wales Island in the East Indies as differing from the rest of its 
tribe in having no third cavity to the stomach. In my Hunterian Lectures for 
1838 I demonstrated the absence of the psalterium in the Moschus Meminna and 
Moschus javanicus. The first published account, with figures, of this modification 
of the Ruminant-stomach is due, I believe, to Prof. Rapp of Tubingen. 
