372 PAL/EONTOLOGY. 



delicate clievrotains of Java and other Indo-Archipelagic 

 islands — e.g. f Tragidus hanchil — yet, like the larger Anoplo- 

 therioids, it differed from the true Ruminants of the present 

 day, and adhered to the more general mammalian type, by 

 the complete series of incisors. 



The affinity of the micro theres to the clievrotains is, never- 

 theless, very close. Let the formative force be transferred 

 from the small upper incisors to the contiguous canines, and 

 the transition would be effected. The ruminant stomach is 

 simplified, in Tragidus, by the suppression of the psalterium 

 or third bag. The stomach of the small Anoplotherioids, 

 whilst preserving a certain degree of complexity, might have 

 been somewhat more simplified. The certain information 

 which the gradations of dentition displayed by the above- 

 cited extinct species impart, testifies to the artificial character 

 of the order Ruminantia of the modern systems, and to the 

 natural character of that wider group of even-toed hoofed 

 animals for which has been proposed the term Artiodactyla .* 

 Genus Hy^enodon, Laiz. — With the delicate and beautiful 

 Herbivora of the upper eocene and lower miocene periods, 

 there coexisted carnivorous quadrupeds, which, to judge by 

 the character of their flesh-cutting teeth (carnassials), were 



more fell and 

 deadly in their 

 destructive task 

 than modern 

 wolves or tigers. 

 Of these extinct 

 Carnivora a spe- 

 cies of the re- 

 markable genus 



Dentition, lower jaw, of Hycenodon. 



Hycenoclon, of about the size of a leopard, has left its re- 

 mains in the upper eocene of Hordwell, Hampshire. Fig. 132 



* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. iv., 1847. 



