﻿MACH^ERODUS LATIDENS. 185 



Felis, and described it as F. megantereon. And that this conclusion of M. Bravard was 

 true is proved, as Professor Owen remarks, 1 by the fragment of skull of an allied form in 

 the British Museum, from the Sevalik Hills. Dr. Kaup, 2 on the other hand, who had met 

 with the remains of the animal at Eppelsheim pointed out that the compressed and serrated 

 canines, in which the two longitudinal grooves so characteristic of the larger Felines were 

 absent, separated the animal to which they belonged frem the genus Felis, and he 

 therefore proposed for them the name Macharodus, or the Sabre-toothed Carnivore. 



On the whole, the evidence which we possess as to the affinities of the animal prove 

 that it belongs to the great family of the Felidse, although those points which Dr. Kaup 

 has brought forward forbid its classification with the genus Felis, from which it differs in 

 the enormous development of the serrated upper canines, as well as the presence of a third 

 lobe on the sectorial edge of the upper Premolar 4. And that it is an aberrant member of 

 the great family of Cats is the opinion of M. de Blainville, Professor Owen, and M. Albert 

 Gaudry. Its dental formula is that of the true Felines. 



§ 2. Range of Genus. — The genus Machserodus is of very wide range both in space 

 and time. It has been found alike in the Meiocene deposits of India by Falconer, the 

 plains of Marathon by Gaudry, and the river-deposit of Eppelsheim by Kaup. 3 It has 

 been known to occur in the Pleiocene strata of the Val d'Arno since 1812, and of 

 Auvergne since the year 1828. It has also been found in the Pleiocene Caves of Brazil 

 by M. Lund, along with the great Sloth, the Megatherium, and the peculiar Horses at 

 that time living in South America. The best known and most widely spread European 

 species is that which ranged over France, Germany, Italy, and Greece, during the late 

 Meiocene and the early Pleiocene periods, under the name of Macharodus cultridens of 

 Kaup, and which has been fortunate in being described by M. Gaudry in his classical 

 work on the 'Animaux Fossiles de l'Attique.' And the proof of the presence of a 

 closely allied form in England we owe to the labours of the Rev. J. McEnery in Kent's 

 Hole Cave, near Torquay. 



§ 3. History of British Remains. — The seven teeth which afford the proof of the 

 ancient sojourn of the Machserodus in Great Britain were discovered so long ago as 1826, 

 and their history has been very remarkable. The Rev. J. MacEnery unfortunately did 

 not publish the results of his explorations in Kent's Hole, which he carried on from time 

 to time after 1825 up to his death in 1840, and the manuscripts were lost, until they 

 fortunately fell into the hands of Mr. J. Vivian, of Torquay, who published an abstract in 

 the year 1859. Ten years later they were published in full by Mr. Pengelly, F.R.S., and 

 afford an authentic and circumstantial account of the discoveries, which had been lost to 



1 'Brit. Foss. Mam.' (1846), p. 1/6. 



2 'Oss. Foss. de Museum de Darmstadt,' 2nd part, 1833. 



25 



