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and the elephant, that its discoverer gave it the name of Mastodon 
elephantoides, while Dr. Falconer called it Elephas Cliftii. M. 
Gaudry gives a number of interesting facts showing the difficulty 
of drawing the line between mastodons and elephants, which 
genera, were they only known to us from British species, we 
should certainly regard as perfectly distinct. 
The Insectivora are now divided into three families, the hedge- 
hogs, the moles, and the shrews. The remains of an animal have 
been found in the French Miocene, which one authority calls 
Erinaceus soricinoides, from its resemblance to the hedgehogs ; 
another who regards it as nearer to the shrews, names it Plesiosorex 
soricinoides ; and a third Plesiosorez talpoides, from its affinities 
with the moles. 
Among the carnivora may be noticed the Amphicyon of the 
middle Tertiary deposits, which as its name denotes belongs to the 
can idee, but which was a plantigrade animal, and has other points 
of resemblance with the bears, thus connecting forms now widely 
separated. Similarly the Gynodon unites in itself the characters of 
the dogs, and the civets, and the Ichtitherium those of the civets, 
and the hyamas. M. Filliol says of the Cynodon, that it is so 
exceedingly variable that seventeen species might be described 
from the specimens which have been discovered ; some of them 
incline towards the dog, and others towards the cat. 
Among the quadrumanous animals, the only one of which the 
complete skeleton is known, the Mesopitltccus, is decidedly an inter- 
mediate form, having the skull of a S cmnopithecus, and the bones 
of a Macacus. 
It is not thus occasionally that we meet, in searching through 
the museum of nature, with a few isolated cases which may be 
brought forward as showing the closer relationship of the mam- 
malia in geological times. The rule is, as Mr. Darwin long ago 
pointed out, that the ancient forms were more generalized, while 
modern ones are more specialized. 
But facts have recently so accumulated that we can take one 
step further. We can not only show that the various forms of 
animal life, extinct and rocent, fit into their places in one groat 
