588 Fossil Remains of Anoplotherium 



have numerous representatives, both recent and fossil. The camel 

 tribe comprises a considerable fossil group, represented in India by 

 the Camelus Sivalensis, and is closely approached to in America by 

 extinct Pachydermatous Macrauchenia. The giraffe has hitherto 

 been confined, like the human race, to a single species, and has 

 occupied an isolated position in the order to which it belongs. It is 

 now as closely represented by its fossil analogues as the camel ; and 

 it may be expected that, when the ossiferous beds of Asia and 

 Africa are better known, other intermediate forms will be found, 

 filling up the wide interval which now separates the giraffe from the 

 an tiered ruminants, its nearest allies in the order according to 

 Cuvier and Owen.* 



The giraffe throws a new light on the original physical characters 

 of Northern India ; for whatever may be urged in regard to the 

 possible range of its vegetable food, it is very clear that, like the 

 existing species, it must have inhabited an open country, and had 

 broad plains to roam over. In a densely forest- clad tract, like that 

 which now skirts the foot of the Himalayahs, it would soon have 

 been exterminated by the large feline ferae, by the hyamas and large 

 predaceous bears which are known to have been members of the old 

 Sewalik fauna. 



Postscript. — Since the above remarks were submitted to the So- 

 ciety, M. Duvernoy's paper, embodying two communications read to 

 the Academy of Sciences on the 19th May and 27th November last, 

 has appeared in the January Number of the ' Annales des Sciences 

 Naturelles.' These notices were published in the ' Comptes Rendus,' 

 but were unknown to the authors at the time. M. Duvernoy 

 describes the lower jaw of a fossil giraffe found in the bottom of a 

 well, lying on the surface of a yellow clay, along with fragments of 

 pottery and domestic utensils, in the court of an ancient donjon of 

 the 14th century in the town of Isoodun, Departement de l'lndre. 

 Considerable doubt remains as to the bed and source whence the 

 fossil was derived. M. Duvernoy attributes the jaw to a distinct 



* M. G. de St. Hilaire, in the zeal for the mutability of species imagined 

 that he had detected in the Sivatherium the primeval type which time and neces- 

 sity had fined down into the giraffe. Anatomical proofs were all against this in- 

 ference : but if a shadow of doubt remained, it must yield to the fact, that in the 

 Sewalik fauna the Giraffe and the Sivatherium were contemporaries. 



