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Geological Society. 



its shores covered with basking reptiles *, and the adjacent lands 

 waving with cardomums and palms, and thuias and cypresses, with 

 monkeys vaulting and gamboling upon their branches, and gigantic 

 serpents entwined around their trunks ; the seas also swarming with 

 sting-rays and saw-fishes, with chimaeras and enormous sharks ? for 

 all these together with countless shells of pearly nautili occur among 

 the fossil remains of the numerous extinct species of fishes, which, 

 during the early ages of the tertiary period, crowded the tepid seas 

 of our now humid and chilling climate. 



Mr. Owen has also determined the character of a new genus of 

 Pachydermatous animal (Hgracotherium) intermediate between the 

 Hyrax, hog, and Chaeropotamus, found in the London clay at Herne 

 Bay, near Margate, by Mr. Richardson. 



Mr. Lyell having submitted to Mr. Owen some fossil teeth from 

 the Red Crag of Newbourne in Suffolk, they proved to be refer- 

 rible to the leopard, bear, hog, and a large kind of deer, and afford 

 the first example of mammalian remains being found in England 

 in any of those divisions of the Crag which Mr. Lyell, in a paper 

 already alluded to, has ascribed to the Miocene period ; these ge- 

 nera are known to occur in the Miocene formations of France and 

 Germany. The numerous Mammalia in the fluvio-marine crag of 

 Norwich, are decidedly of a later date ; among these Mr. Lyell 

 enumerates the teeth and jaw of Mastodon longirostris, a tusk of an 

 elephant with serpulae attached, and bones of a horse, hog, and field- 

 mouse ; there occur bones of birds, many fishes, and numerous shells, 

 partly marine, and partly freshwater and terrestrial. 



The recent discoveries in Brazil by Dr. Lund of extinct Mam- 

 malia, that probably lived in some late portion of the tertiary 

 epochs, form a new and important chapter in Palaeontology. The 

 largest of these are referrible to more gigantic forms than at present 

 exist of families now peculiar to South America — e. g. to Sloths 

 and Armadillos ; just as most of the fossil mammalia of New Holland 

 belong to families and genera which are still peculiar to that country. 

 In a paper on one of these animals from Buenos Ayres, Mr. Owen 

 has shown that the bony armour, which several authors have referred 

 to the Megatherium, belongs to the Glyptodon, an animal allied to 

 the Armadillo, and of which a head containing teeth, and attached 

 to a tessellated bony covering of the body and tail, resembling 

 those of an Armadillo, has been lately found near Buenos Ayres, 

 and is figured by Sir Woodbine Parish in his interesting work on 

 that country, 1838. 



The Glyptodon differed from the Megatherium in the structure 

 and number of the teeth, and from all known Armadillos in the 

 form of the lower jaw, and the presence of a long process descend- 

 ing from the zygoma; and approached in both these respects to the 

 Megatherium. The teeth differ from those of Armadillos, in ha- 

 ving two deep grooves both on the outer and inner surface, are more 

 complex than those of any known Edentate, and indicate a passage 

 from that family into the Toxodon. The ungueal phalanges are 



* This stands in striking contrast to the supposed Glacial period. — Edit. 



