104^ 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



Captain of Engineers, Coclietaux. All the bones are admirably pre- 

 served ; and, if the teeth are detached from the maxillaries, we at least 

 have the exact indication of their number, place, and size, by the disposi- 

 tion of the alveoles. These two heads belonja: to animals which ought evi- 

 dently to form a new genus, characterized by thirty-two teeth regularly 

 spaced in the middle paru of the jaws. 



" Finally, among the mammifers which inhabited that sea are also found 

 littoral species ; of the seals, some of which attained to grand propor- 

 tions, we possess divers fragments of skeletons and of teeth, which leave 

 no doubt of the presence of these singular amphibians in the ancient seas 

 of these latitudes.* 



"The Government, seconded by the intelligent zeal of several officers of 

 engineers, has specially charged the Yiscomte B. duBas, to see to the con- 

 servation of these precious relics ; and we shall have the occasion, v\ e be- 

 lieve, to present a tolerably complete history of one of the most singular and 

 most interesting of the antediluvian animals which have been discovered. 



We speak next of the Squalodon, and we shall enter into some details of 

 the history of this curious group of fossil carnivora. 



" Some years ago (1844) the Doctor Albert Koch returned from l^orth 

 America, with a rich cargo of fossil bones belonging to strange arjimals. 

 They had been exhibited already in public before their departure for Eu- 

 rope. They were successively shown in the principal towns of Germany, 

 at Dresden, Berlin, and Leipsic.f 



" This exhibition made a great noise, and one can comprehend why it 

 could not be otherwise. An animal more than a hundred feet long, having 

 head of an extraordinary form, jaws furnished with teeth such as were not 

 known, and which in spite of its immoderate length, bore two small pairs 

 of limbs : — it was a gigantic serpent suspended before and behind by a 

 pair of fins. 



" Curiosity was raised to the highest point. The friends of the marvel- 

 lous found in it ample food for suppositions of every kind, and the savants 

 themselves did not know whether they ought to believe their eyes or their 

 prmciples. 



"Numerous papers were produced on the occasion. The American na- 

 turalists, in the first place, took this animal for a reptile and gave it the 

 name of Basilosaurus. 



" Three or four years after the discovery of these remains, the Erench 

 and English zoologists {Dum.eril, Buckland, and Owen) made of them on 

 the contrary a mammifer ; and Owen did not hesitate, after the examina- 

 tion of a fragment, to assign it to the walruses, proposing the name of 

 Zeiiff/uJou, which it still retains. 



" In Germany, after the public exhibition of these numerous pieces, 

 opinions were divided. 



" In reality the vertebrae of several individuals had been grouped toge- 



* Bulletins de I'Academie, t. xx., No. 6. 



t For tide of the principal publications on these sineular animals, see the 

 'Transact inns of the American Piiilosopliical Society,' 1834; 'Transactions of the Geo- 

 logical Society o! l\nmsylvauia,' vol. i., Philadelphia, 1835 ; Transact. Geol. Soc. of Lon- 

 don, vol. vi. : ' (\)nip;es Ivcndns des se'ances de rAcademie des Sciences,' Oct. 1838 ; Pro- 

 ceed. Acad. Nat. Sciences, ri.ihulelpliia, 1845 ; Carus, Pesultate Geol. Auat. nnd Zool. 

 Untcrs. iibcr das miter dem Xanieu Uydkaechos von Dr. Koch zuerst uach Europa 

 gehrachtc grosse fos>i!e Skelelt. Dresden, 184? ; De Blainville, ' Osteoaraphie/ 1840, 

 livr. vii.^p. 44 ; Kar.-tc-irs und Dechen's Archive, 1812; Ann. Sc. Nat. i'ii. serie, vol. v. 

 1846; J. Midler, ' I eber die I'ossile Kesle der Zeu2;lodonteu von Nord- America,' iu-fol. 

 Berlin, ISlO. 



