424 PALEONTOLOGY. 



existing representative is now, like the hippopotamus, confined 

 to Africa, adds to the propriety of regarding the three conti- 

 nuous continental divisions of the Old World as forming, in 

 respect to the geographical distribution of the pliocene, post- 

 pliocene, and recent mammalian genera, one great natural 

 province. The only large edentate animal {Pangolin gigan- 

 tesque, Cuvier ; Macrotherium, Lartet) hitherto found in the 

 tertiary deposits of Europe, manifests its nearest affinities to 

 the genus Manis, which is exclusively Asiatic and African. 



Extending the comparison between the existing and the 

 latest of the extinct series of Mammalia to the continent of 

 South America, it may be first remarked that, with the excep- 

 tion of some carnivorous and cervine species, no representa- 

 tives of the above-cited mammalian genera of the Old World 

 of the geographer have yet been found in South America. 

 Buffon * long since enunciated a similar generalization with 

 regard to the existing species and genera of Mammalia ; it is 

 almost equally true in respect of the fossil. Not a relic of an 

 elephant, a rhinoceros, a hippopotamus, a bison, a hyama, or 

 a lagomys, has yet been detected in the caves or the more 

 recent tertiary deposits of South America. On the contrary, 

 most of the fossil Mammalia from those formations are as dis- 

 tinct from the Europaeo- Asiatic forms as they are closely allied 

 to the peculiarly South American existing genera of Mammalia. 



The genera Equus, Tapir us, and the still more ubiquitous 

 Mastodon, form the chief, if not sole exceptions. The repre- 

 sentation of Equios during the pliocene and post-pliocene 

 periods by distinct species in Asia (E. primigenius) and in 

 South America (E. curvidens), is analogous to the geographical 

 distribution of the species of Tapirus at the present day. 



South America alone is now inhabited by species of sloth, 

 of armadillo, of cavy, aguti, ctenomys, and platyrrhine monkey ; 

 but no fossil remains of a quadruped referable to any of these 



* Histoire Naturelle, torn. ix\, p. 13, 4to, 1758. 



