264 



THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. III. 



discovered. This last fossil was purchased by SirR. Mur- 

 chison, for whom I developed it, and removed the stone 

 with which all the bones were thickly encrusted, so as to 

 expose the entire skeleton, which differs but slightly 

 from that of the recent species ; it is figured and described 

 in the Geological Transactions for 1832.* 



A tortoise, three feet in length, with the cranium and bones 

 of the neck, tail, and of three of the pats, well preserved, 

 has since been discovered. Sir R. Murchison concludes 



* Although there were certain obvious differences between some 

 parts of the skeleton, and the corresponding bones of the existing 

 species of Fox with which I had the means of instituting a comparison, 

 I did not feel myself warranted in affirming the fossil to be specifically 

 distinct from all known recent vulperine forms ; an opinion in which 

 Mr. Clift entirely concurred; I therefore simply designated it the 

 Fossil Fox of (Eningen. M. Meyer, however, from my figures and 

 descriptions only, has deemed it right to impose the name of Cards 

 palustris; and subsequently Professor Owen, from detecting a few 

 slight discrepancies upon a rigorous comparison of the fossil with 

 recent congenerous forms, has referred it to a new genus ; and the 

 fossil, which cost me so many nights of patient dissection to de- 

 velop, is now enrolled in the annals of science as the Galecynus 

 (Eningensis of Prof. Owen. See Geol. Journal, vol. iii. p. 55. It has 

 been shrewdly remarked, by a celebrated anonymous author, that 

 such is palaeontological refinement now-a-days, that an extra plication 

 of enamel in the tooth of a fossil pachyderm, or an additional notch 

 on the tooth of a carnivore, is sufficient to obtain a specific and 

 even sub-generic name for that animal, and constitute its origin a 

 separate creation ! If this he admitted, the fixity of species must soon 

 be deemed a chimera. 



A late eminent naturalist observed, " that the laws of correlation, 

 though so admirable in the results of their application to extinct 

 forms, must still be admitted with great caution, and some limitation : 

 for the proportions of many animals vary greatly, from age and other 

 circumstances. Thus, the legs of a colt are relatively much longer 

 than those of the adult horse; and were we to conclude from the 

 extreme size of the internal condyle of the arm-bone of the Oryctcropus, 

 that the claws of that animal are equally developed with those of others 

 of the same order, the conclusion would be erroneous." — Harlan s 

 Medical and Physical Researches, Philadelphia, 1835. 



