Ch. XVI.] MAMMALIA OF PARIS GYPSUM. 299 



occurs as a granular crystalline rock, and together with the associated 

 marls, contains land and fluviatile shells, together with the bones and 

 skeletons of birds and quadrupeds. Several landplants are also met 

 with, among which are fine specimens of the fan palm or palmetto 

 tribe (Flabellaria). The remains also of freshwater fish, and of croc- 

 odiles and other reptiles, occur in the gypsum. The skeletons of 

 mammalia are usually isolated, often entire, the most delicate extremi- 

 ties being preserved ; as if the carcases, clothed with their flesh and 

 skin, had been floated down soon after death, and while they were still 

 swollen by the gases generated by their first decomposition. The few 

 accompanying shells are of those light kinds which frequently float on 

 the surface of rivers, together with wood. 



M. Prevost has therefore suggested that a river may have swept 

 away the bodies of animals, and the plants which lived on its borders, 

 or in the lakes which it traversed, and may have carried them down 

 into the centre of the gulf into which flowed the waters impregnated 

 with sulphate of lime. We know that the Fiume Salso in Sicily 

 enters the sea so charged with various salts that the thirsty cattle 

 refuse to drink of it. A stream of sulphureous water as white as 

 milk, descends into the sea from the volcanic mountain of Idienne 

 on the east of Java ; and a great body of hot water, charged with 

 sulphuric acid, rushed down from the same volcano on one occasion, 

 and inundated a large tract of country, destroying, by its noxious prop- 

 erties, all the vegetation.* In like manner the Pusanibio, or " Vin- 

 egar River," of Columbia, which rises at the foot of Purace, an 

 extinct volcano, 7500 feet above the level of the sea, is strongly im- 

 pregnated with sulphuric and hydrochloric acids and with oxide of 

 iron. We may easily suppose the waters of such streams to have 

 properties noxious to marine animals, and in this manner the entire 

 absence of marine remains in the ossiferous gypsum may be explained.f 

 There are no pebbles or coarse sand in the gypsum ; a circumstance 

 which agrees well with the hypothesis that these beds were precipi- 

 tated from water holding sulphate of lime in solution, and floating the 

 remains of different animals. 



In this formation the relics of about fifty species of quadrupeds, 

 including the genera Paleotherium (see fig. 220), Anoplotherium (see 

 fig. 219), and others, have been found, all extinct, and nearly four- 

 fifths of them belonging to the Perissodactyle or odd-toed division of 

 the order Pachydermata, which now contains only four living genera, 

 namely, rhinoceros, tapir, horse, and hyrax. With them a few 

 carnivorous animals are associated, among which are the Hycenodon 

 dasyuroides, a species of dog, Canis Parisiensis, and a weasel, Cyn- 

 odon Parisiensis. Of the Rodentia are found a squirrel; of the 



* Leyde Magaz. voor Wetensch. Konst en Lett., partie v. cahier i. p. 71. Cited 

 by Rozet, Joum. de Geologie, torn. i. p. 43. 



\ M. C. Prevost, Submersions Iteratives, &c. Note 23. 



