196 



ON ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE 



heda, with its antlers of nearly eleven feet from tip to tip,* figures as chief. 

 The finest fallow-deer, red-deer, roes, and stag-s, belonging to the fossil king- 

 dom, have been found in Scania, Sommes, Etampes, Orleans, or scattered 

 over Europe, in limestone, peat-bogs, or sand pits. M. Cuvier has described 

 seven distinct species, all of which, with the exception of one, are extinct or 

 unknown species. Of the fossil ox, buffalo, and antelope genus, he has given 

 four distinct species, all apparently unknown. 



He has also collected fossil remains of the horse and hog genera, without 

 being able to ascertain to what species they belong : and various animals of 

 the order glires or gnawers, as beavers, guinea-pigs, and rabbits, and two 

 decidedly unknown species of the sloth tribe, which he has distinguished by 

 the names of Megalonix and Megatherium, the first as large as an ox, earliest 

 discovered in limestone caves in Virginia in 1796 ; and the second of the 

 size of the rhinoceros, hitherto found only in South America. Specimens of 

 the ox-sized have since been found in Buenos Ayres, in Lima, and in Para- 

 guay ; and of these three the first, a perfect skeleton, was sent as a present 

 to M. Cuvier by the Marquis Loretto in 1789. 



Relics of fossil seals and lamantins, though less perfect than most of the 

 preceding, enter also into this extraordinary collection. 



Li the other classes M. Cuvier has hitherto made less progress ; though his 

 collection of fossil, and apparently unknown amphibials, especially of the 

 crocodile and tortoise tribes, is considerable, and highly interesting, and should 

 his life be spared for ten or twelve years longer, we may have reason to 

 expect these classes to be filled up as numerously as that of mammals. 



Among the most extraordinary of the fossil amphibials he has enumerated, 

 "is the gigantic monster first discovered as early as the year 1766, in the lime- 

 stone quarries at Maestricht, and which was at that time regarded by some 

 naturalists as a whale, by uiliers as a crucodile, and by a third set as an enor- 

 mous unknown fish. M. Cuvier has sufficiently ascertained that it must have 

 formed an intermediate genus between those animals of the lizard tribe which 

 possess a long and forked tongue, and those with a short tongue and a palate 

 armed with teeth ; and it is hence generally regarded in the present day as a 

 MONITOR, making an approach towards the crocodile. The length of the ske- 

 leton seems to have been about twenty-four feet : the head is the sixth part 

 of the whole length of the animal, which is nearly the proportion it bears in 

 the crocodile. The tail must have been very strong, aud its width at the 

 extremity have rendered it a most powerful oar, capable indeed of opposing 

 any violence of the waters ; and it is hence chiefly that M. Cuvier regards it 

 as having been an inhabitant of the ocean : though we are hereby put into 

 possession of a kind or species far supassing in size and power any of those 

 which it most nearly resembles, and at least rivalling the magnitude of the 

 crocodile. t 



The circumstances under which most of the preceding large and fossil ani- 

 mals have been found, and especially those traced in Siberia, afford sufficient 

 proof that the catastrophe which arrested them must have overtaken them 

 suddenly while in their native regions ; and that they could not have been 

 brought into their present situations from a remote distance. And we have 



* See Sir Thomas Molyneux's account of this animal in Phil. Trans. 1726. 



This is the cervus Enrycerus of Dr. Hibbert : a name he has applied to it from Aldrovandus, who ap- 

 pears to have been acquainted with this species of fossil elk, and has referred to if as common at that time 

 in various soils in the British isles. Specimens, indeed, are still often to be met with in this quarter: 

 and Dr. Hibbert, in the essay now referred to, quotes part of a letter from Dr. Milligan, of Edinburgh, 

 in which he adverts to the skeletons of three great elks that were lately dug up in Ireland, one of which 

 measures eleven feet between the tips of the horns. And he adds, what would seem to show that this spe- 

 cies had not been many ages extinct, that near them, in a three feet stratum of marl, were also found the 

 skeletons of three dogs; and, at a little distance, several human skeletons. Edin. Journ. of Science, No. V. 

 p. 134, 1825. 



+ The fossil animals of this class have been since considerably enlarged by other discoveries ; among the 

 most curious of which, perhaps, are the Plesiosaurus of the late Mr. Couybeare, and the Megalosaurus of 

 Professor Buckland. The remains of the last are the most imperfect; though from a large portion of the 

 lower jaw dug up from the soil at Stonesfield, near Oxford, and a thigh-bone found at Cuckfield, in Sussex, 

 Mr. Buckland has been able to ascertain its mode of dentition, as also to estimate that its face must have 

 terminated in a flat, straight, and very narrow snout. Its length seems to have been upwards of sixty feet, 

 and its bulk to have equalled that of an elephant seven feet high. Geol. Trans, series ii. vol. i. part ii. 



The struoture of this genus makes an approach to that of fishes, but it haa a length and flexibility of 



