404 PALAEONTOLOGY. 



Family — C ee vidzE. 



Cuvier * first made known the fact of teeth with the cha- 

 racter of ruminant molars, and of portions of antlers, being 

 associated with remains of Mastodon in the fresh-water 

 beds (probably pliocene) of Montabusard, department of the 

 Loiret. These early ruminant fossils agreed in size with the 

 roebuck ; but there were characters shewing that they dif- 

 fered almost generically from all known deer. Subsequently 

 the entire cranium of a small Euminant (Dorcatherium, Kaup) 

 was found in the miocene strata near Eppelsheim, the teeth of 

 which resembled those described and figured by Cuvier ; but 

 the series being complete, shewed that the animal had seven 

 grinders on each side of the lower jaw, and long procumbent 

 canines in the upper jaw. Moreover, the animal possessed, 

 like the males of the small deer of India called " Muntjac," 

 pedunculate antlers as well as canine teeth. Both in the 

 miocene beds of Ingre and Eppelsheim, similar fossil antlers, 

 simply bifurcate near their end, have been found. It is pro- 

 bable that these which have been referred to the nominal 

 species Gervus anocerus may belong to the Dorcatherium. 



Other species of Cervidw were, however, associated with 

 that remarkable form in the miocene period. Dr. Kaup 

 ascribes some more or less mutilated antlers, which had 

 been shed, to a species he calls C. dicranocerus. The beam 

 rises from one to two inches without sending off any 

 branch or brow-antler ; it then sends off a branch so large 

 and so oblique that the beam seems here to bifurcate ; the an- 

 terior prong is, however, the smallest and shortest. The writer 

 has received similar shed and mutilated antlers from the red 

 crag of Suffolk, which seems to contain a melange of brokcn- 

 up beds of eocene, miocene, pliocene, and post-pliocene age.f 



* Ossemens Fossiles, 4to, torn, iv., p. 104, pi. viii., figs. 5 and 6. 

 t Quarterly Jour, of the Geol. Soc, vol. xii., 1856, p. 217, figs. 14-16. 



