516 



CENOZOIC TIME. 



Teliosts, or common fishes, which began in the Cretaceous, was pro- 

 fusely represented ; their numbers exceeding much those of Ganoids. 

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

 genera and partly in species. 



Among Reptiles, there were many true Crocodiles, — eighteen or 

 twenty species having been described. Over sixty species of Turtles 

 are known ; and the shell of one Indian species, of the Miocene — 

 Golossochelys Atlas Falconer & Cautley — had a length of twelve feet, 

 and the animal a total of nearly twenty feet. The feet must have been 

 larger than those of a Rhinoceros. 



A species of Snake, twenty feet long, Palceophis typhceus Owen, was 

 discovered in the Bracklesham beds of the Middle Eocene, and another 

 species, thirteen feet long, in the Lower Eocene of Sheppey. Several 

 species related to the common 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 

 Department of Allier, in central France (between 46° and 47° in lati- 

 tude), has alone afforded seventy species ; and many of these Miocene 

 birds are of tropical character. He says, respecting 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 nourish- 

 ment. Large Adjutants, Cranes, and Flamingoes, the Palcelodi (birds 

 of curious forms, partaking of the characters both of the Flamingoes 

 and of ordinary Grallse) and Ibises frequented the banks of the water- 

 courses, where the larvae of insects and mollusks abounded ; Pelicans 

 floated in the midst of the lakes ; and, lastly, Sand-grouse and numer- 

 ous gallinaceous birds assisted in giving to this ornithological popula- 

 tion a strange physiognomy, which recalls to mind the descriptions that 

 Livingstone has given us of certain lakes of southern Africa. 



The London Clay (Eocene) has afforded Owen a bird with teeth, 

 named by him Odontopteryx, but having the teeth simply dentations 

 of the bony edge of the bill. 



Among the Mammals, the earliest, or those of the lower Eocene in 

 England, are Pachyderms, related to the Tapir, of the genera Lophio- 

 don, Coryphodon, and Hyracothere, and a dog-like Carnivore, the Pa- 

 Iceocyon of Owen. They were found in the London Clay. In France, 

 beds supposed to be still lower, or equivalent of the bottom beds of 

 the Eocene, have afforded, at l«a Vere, in the department of Aisne, a. 



