658 On traces of a fossil Giraffe [July, 



use of it in England. It is so far fortunate that I am now driven to 

 my own resources, and compelled to invent and to make an instru- 

 ment which, though quite on a different plan from that depicted in 

 Batk's diagram, will I hope produce the same correct effects, with the 

 additional advantage of being adjustable as to angle of the guiding 

 plane e g, so as to regulate the force of light and shade ad libitum ; 

 while I shall moreover be at liberty to use it wherever I please. 



I find that impressions in hard sealing wax answer perfectly for 

 ruling, in cases where parties are afraid of trusting original gems 

 or coins under the tracing point. But it should be remembered that 

 the casts must be in relief like the coins, or their image will be revers- 

 ed in the engraved representation. 



VII. — Note on a fossil Ruminant genus allied to Giraffidce in the Si- 

 walik hills. By Captain P. T. Cautley. 



When we look at the number of species of Proboscidan Pachyder- 

 mata which swarmed in the primeval forests ; when we see that in the 

 present day nature appears to have left but solitary species to attest the 

 gigantic form of primitive existence, the imagination naturally places 

 before our eyes forms of corresponding magnitude in other genera ; we 

 picture to ourselves gigantic ruminants and gigantic carnivora only to 

 be revealed by the remains which nature has placed in its own keeping 

 to exhibit to inquiring man the wisdom of design and the systematic 

 chain of organization established throughout the whole of the animal 

 kingdom. 



Amongst the Ruminants the discovery of the Sivatherium gigan- 

 teum has most amply tended to prove the truth of this induction, exhi- 

 biting a ruminating animal bearing the same proportion to the rest of 

 its genus, as the Mastodon and Elephant do to that of the Pachydermata. 

 Amongst the Carnivora we have the Ursus Sivalensis, an animal far ex- 

 ceeding in dimensions its congener of the present period, or the Ursus 

 Spelaeus and bears of the German caves ; with a species of hysena at 

 least one-third larger than that now existing. The reptiles also have 

 their gigantic representative in an entirely new genus of the tortoise, 

 for which we propose the generic name of Megalochelys, from the 

 enormous proportions of its remains as yet discovered, and the size of 

 its femoral and humeral extremities equalling those of the largest 

 rhinoceros. The question however does not appear to be whether 

 the animals of former periods were larger than those now existing, but 



