Quadrupeds. 



8155 



selves from all known species. Palms, reeds, and many other kinds 

 are met with in these strata, indicating upon the whole a vegetation 

 not exactly of tropical climates, as does the flora of our secondary 

 formations, but rather such as now clothes the countries bordering on 

 the Mediterranean. But what is most important as regards these 

 quadrupeds is the circumstance that in the environs of Paris and in 

 those of Orleans, and in a district not far from the Rhine, near Stras- 

 burg, the strata enclosing them are again covered with marine deposits. 



After a careful examination of the contents of these, there admits 

 no doubt that the sea returned and covered the land on which these 

 animals had lived, and where the rivers and lakes were situated, in 

 the beds of which their remains had been buried. To such an event 

 the most celebrated geologists of the day have, with great probability, 

 attributed the annihilation of the quadrupeds then inhabiting the 

 ancient continents. 



Deluges and earthquakes have operated, at different intervals of time, 

 to destroy the productions of Nature and Art, which modern industry 

 has clearly developed; but geologists have extended their exertions, 

 and have shown how much of the history of extinct races may yet be 

 rescued from oblivion. The Dinotherium, together with the Mega- 

 therium, constitute perhaps the most remarkable of all fossil Mam- 

 malia in regard to size, and unexampled peculiarities of anatomical 

 construction, with which modern discovery is acquainted. The Dino- 

 therium is the largest of all land creatures belonging to that class of 

 animals which suckle their young, whilst the Megatherium presents 

 greater deviations from ordinary animal forms than occur in any other 

 species, either of recent or fossil quadrupeds. 



The second or miocene system of tertiary deposits contains an 

 abundance of the extinct genera of lacustrine (inhabiting lakes) Mam- 

 malia, with the earliest forms of genera, which exist at the present 

 time. These admixtures have been found in great abundance at 

 Epplesheim, near Altzey, about twelve leagues south of Mayence; 

 and splendid specimens are preserved in the museum of Darmstadt. 

 Among all these remains of animals, which it is unnecessary here to 

 particularize, further than that they embrace numerous important spe- 

 cimens, no vestiges of the monkey tribe have been discovered, until 

 lately, in the department of Gers, in France, a single jaw-bone of one 

 of these animals was found among other skeletons of extinct quad- 

 rupeds. 



No traces of man or his works have hitherto been discovered in 

 any of these strata which can distinctly claim a remote antiquity 



