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even -with such pages of the geological record as have escaped the 
destroying agencies of time is shown by the fact that very little 
has been added to our knowledge of these beds since the time of 
the great French naturalist ; although the fossils he unearthed are 
doubtless but a fractional part of the whole number that have 
been preserved in the strata underlying the French capital. 
It must not be forgotten, moreover, that many of the Eocene 
species are only known to us from unique or fragmentary specimens 
of teeth, or jaws, while of very few indeed has the whole skeleton 
been discovered. A well-known palaeontologist once observed to 
me, when pointing out an unusually perfect specimen in one of 
our national natural history collections, “were such fossils common 
a good many of our so-called species would disappear.” 
It is the Miocene strata, however, which have of late years 
yielded the most important discoveries. The animals of the Eocene 
period seemed to Cuvier and the naturalists of his day sufficiently 
unlike existing genera or species to justify their belief that they 
were not connected by relationship with each other. In the 
Miocene beds have been discovered the remains of animals which 
clearly show that this apparent disconnection was merely due to 
imperfect knowledge. They are distinctly allied to Eocene 
mammals on the one hand, and to existing quadrupeds on the other. 
During the past year, M. Gaudry, who, it may be remarked, 
was formerly an anti-evolutionist, but was converted by his own 
discoveries, has brought together the work of former writers and 
the knowledge gained by his own researches, and has given us a 
most valuable and interesting contribution to the literature of the 
subject in his volume, : Lcs Enchainements da monde animal dans 
les temps Geologigues Mammiferes Tertiaires.’ The locality which 
has yielded to this gentleman the most abundant collection of 
animals of the Miocene period, is that of Pikermi in Greece. 
So richly fossiliforous is it, that he says that he has carried away 
with him 1000 specimens of the bones and teeth of Hipparion, 
700 of Rhinoceros , 500 of Tragoceros, and so on, having left 
behind a much larger number. The very profusion of specimens 
at this spot is in itself an illustration of the imperfection 
