1896.] Geology and Paleontology. 667 
+ 
which is found in the supposed ancestral genus, Daerytherium. Accord- 
ingly I am not acquainted with any good generic character at present, 
which will distinguish the so-called genus Diplobune from Anoplother- 
ium, as in many cases in jaws from the Phosphorites, it is impossible to 
say whether they belong to Anoplotherium or Diplobune. Dr. Henri 
Filhol informed me that he was of the same opinion, in regard to the 
validity of the genus Diplobune. 
In Dacrytherium the hind foot has at least four well developed toes 
and the internal digit is not placed at an angle with the others as in 
Anoplotherium. This structure of the pes is just what one would 
expect to find in a genus standing in ancestral relationship to the more 
specialized members of the Anoplotheriide. Granting that Dacryther- 
ium fulfills in most of its characters, what we require of a form, supposed 
to be ancestral to Anoplotherium, there is still the presence in Daery- 
therium of a preorbital fossa, which is absent in theskull of Anoplother- 
ium, and also another objection, is, that Dacrytherium has claw-like un- 
gual phalanges, much as in Agriocherus. I believe, however, the ex- 
tremely compressed ungual phalanges of Dacrytherium is of little weight 
against this genus being ancestral to Anoplotherium, for in the latter 
these phalanges are rather compressed, more so than in the normal 
Artiodactyles, and they could be easily derived from those of Daery- 
therium. The structure of the skull is not known in all the species of 
Anoplotherium, and one of them may have had a skull with a preorbital 
fossa, which is so characteristic of Dacrytherium. 
As is well known, the original specimens of the manus and pes of 
Anoplotherium commune, which are in the Muséum d’ Histoire Natur-. 
elle, Paris, show only two well developed digits as restored by Cuvier. 
This restoration of the feet of Anoplotherium is shown by Schlosser and 
Zittell to have been an error on the part of Cuvier, and I quite agree 
with these authors on this point. Prof. Zittell in his “ Traité de Paleon- 
tologie” in speaking of the structure of the feet in Anoplotherium re- 
marks “La plupart des représentation de la patte d’ Anoplotherium 
faites jusqus à present omettent par erreur à la patte antérieur |’ index 
et le rudiment de pouce, à la patte postérieur le second doigt.” I have 
examined a fine cast of the hind foot of Anoplotherium commune and I 
find that the restoration of the internal portion as completed by Cuvier 
is quite erroneous. The two small bones placed by him on the tibular 
side of the pes do not at all fit the facets on which they are placed. The 
broad and obliquely placed facet on Mt. 111 in A. commune is for the 
large and wide spreading second digit, this same structure of the meta- 
tarsal occurs in A. (Kurytherium) latipes of the upper Eocene of Dé- 
bruge. 
