CENOZOIC TIME — TERTIARY. 923 



and among them in the Eocene occurred species of Acipenser or Sturgeon. 

 Teeth of Sharks are also common, and are like those of America in genera 

 and partly in species. 



Among Rejjtiles, there were many true Crocodiles, — 18 or 20 species 

 having been described. Over 60 species of Tertiary Turtles are known ; and 

 the shell of one Indian species from the Pliocene of the Siwalik Hills, 

 Testudo [Colossochelys) Atlas, had a length of six feet. 



A species of Snake, 20 feet long, Paloiopliis typhosus Owen, was discovered 

 in the Bracklesham beds of the Middle Eocene, and another species, 30 feet 

 long, in the Lower Eocene of Sheppey. Several species related to the com- 

 mon Black Snake (Colubridce) occur in the Miocene. 



Remains of a large number of Tertiary Birds have been found and 

 described. According to A. Milne Edwards, the Miocene beds of the Depart- 

 ment of AUier, in central Erance (between 46° and 47° in latitude), has 

 alone afforded 70 species ; and many of these Miocene birds are of tropical 

 character. He thus speaks of them: Parrots and Trogons inhabited the 

 woods. Swallows built, in the fissures of the rock, nests in all probability 

 like those now found in certain parts of Asia and the Indian Archipelago. 

 A Secretary Bird, nearly allied to that of the Cape of Good Hope, sought in 

 the plains the serpents and reptiles which at that time, as now, must have 

 furnished its nourishment. Large Adjutants, Cranes, and Flamingoes, the 

 Palcelodi (birds of curious forms, partaking of the characters both of the 

 Flamingoes and of ordinary Grallae) with Ibises frequented the banks of 

 the watercourses, where the larvae of Insects and Mollusks abounded ; Peli- 

 cans floated in the midst of the lakes ; and, lastly. Sand-grouse and numerous 

 gallinaceous birds assisted in giving to this ornithological population a strange 

 physiognomy, which recalls to mind the descriptions that Livingstone has 

 given us of certain lakes of southern Africa. 



The London Clay (Eocene) afforded Owen a bird, named by him Odon- 

 topteryx, having tooth-like dentations of the bony edge of the bill. 



The Mammals of Europe were much like those of America in the charac- 

 teristics of the earliest known species and in the lines of succession. The 

 beds of the Lower Eocene of Europe, the Ceruaysian, near Reims, and else- 

 where, in Erance, have afforded kinds of Ungulates, Creodonts, and Quad- 

 rumana, related to those of the Puerco group. Remains of species of 

 Zeuglodon have been reported from England, France, Germany, Russia, 

 and even from New Zealand. The London Clay of the London basin, repre- 

 senting the Middle Eocene, has, like the Wasatch, its species of Coryphodon 

 and Hyracotherium, genera first established by Owen from British species, 

 and also new Creodonts ; and the Upper Eocene, including the Calcaire 

 grossier of Paris, is like the Bridger group in its Ungulates, Creodonts, 

 and Quadrumana, the genera Lophiodon, HyracJiyus, being characteristic. 

 Further, the Uinta beds, or those of the closing Eocene, have equivalents in 

 the Gypsum beds of Montmartre of the Paris basin, the beds that afforded 

 Cuvier the earliest known of Tertiary Mammals. These Parisian strata, the 



