46 
EAST WING. 
the great divisions thus mapped out, especially of the Inverte- 
brata and plants, it has been found convenient to adopt a 
stratigraphical or even geographical grouping, the fossils of 
different geological formations being kept apart, and those of 
the British Isles separated from those of foreign localities. 
As this portion of the Museum is fully described in the 
Illustrated Guide* it will only be necessary to give a brief 
account of it here. 
fxS^ The large front gallery first entered from the hall is entirely 
Mammals. devoted to the remains of Mammalia. Along the centre are 
placed a number of large and striking objects, of too great a size 
to be contained in the wall-cases. The first is a nearly complete 
skeleton of the American Mastodon, an animal closely allied to 
the elephant, from which it is chiefly distinguished by the 
characters of its molar teeth. Beyond this is the skull of an 
Elephant (MepJias ganesa), remarkable for the immense length 
of its tusks, from the Siwalik Hills of India, and another of the 
Mammoth {Elejphas jprimigenius) with huge curved tusks, in a 
perfect state of preservation, found in the brick earth at Ilford 
in Essex. Then follow skeletons of the great extinct Irish Deer 
(Megaceros giganteus), male and female, the former distinguished 
by its magnificent palmated antlers, resembling those of a 
fallow deer on a large scale. 
Here has lately been placed, through the liberality of 
Professor 0. C. Marsh, a model of a perfect skeleton of the 
Uintatherium or Dinoceras mirahile, one of the most remarkable 
of the many wonderful forms of animal life lately discovered in 
the tertiary beds of the western portion of the United States of 
America. This animal combines in some respects the characters 
of a rhinoceros with those of an elephant, and has others 
altogether special to itself. The group to which it belonged 
became extinct in the Miocene period, without leaving any 
successors. 
Beyond this is a skeleton of a very rare and interesting 
animal, the Northern Manatee or Sea Cow {Rliytina gigas), the 
last known resort of which was Behring's Island in the North 
Pacific, where it was completely exterminated towards the close 
* * Guide to tlie Exhibition Galleries of the Department of Geology and 
Palaeontology.' Price fourpence. 
