THE 



AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



Art. XXYII. — Studies of Eocene Mammalia in the Marsh 

 Collection. Peabody Musextm ; by J. L. Wortman. With 

 Plate V. 



PART I. CAENIVORA. 



Introduction. 



In pursuance of an understanding had with the late Professor 

 Marsh shortly before his death, the writer has recently under- 

 taken the study of the more important materials in the 

 splendid collection of Eocene Mammalia in the Marsh Collec- 

 tion of the Peabody Museum, with the object of presenting a 

 full account of the structure and relationship of those forms, 

 as far as revealed by the remains at v present known. This 

 material was derived almost exclusively from the Bridger and 

 Uinta Basins of Wyoming and Utah, but less extensive collec- 

 tions from the Eocene Basin of the San Juan of New Mexico 

 are also included. The first collections of fossils from these 

 localities were gathered in 1870, by the Yale Expedition into 

 the Western Bad Lands, under the enthusiastic leadership of 

 Professor Marsh himself. For four succeeding years, expedi- 

 tions of a similar character were organized, equipped, and led 

 into the fossil-bearing horizons of the West by this indefati- 

 gable student of paleontology, to whom the science is so deeply 

 indebted. Later, for a number of years, Professor Marsh 

 employed regularly trained collectors to search for fossils in the 

 Bad Lands of these basins. The collections resulting from these 

 sources have a richness and significance, perhaps unrivaled by 

 any similar one in the world. The importance of the subject 

 to the student of Mammalogy can scarcely be over-estimated, 

 since these epochs witnessed the beginnings and branching off 

 of many groups destined to play such a prominent part in 



Am. Jour. Scl— Fourth Series, Vol. XI, No. 65.— May, 1901. 

 22 



