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kind is made with a much greater assurance of its certainty. The 
known fossil ruminants are also animals of the climate in which they 
are now found ; thus the stag, ox, aurochs, roebuck, musk-ox of 
Canada, now dwell, and have always dwelt, in the cold countries ; 
whilst the species which we consider as unknown, if we must refer 
them, at all events, to existing analogues, must be sought for in the 
warm countries. Our unknown fossil ruminants, in part, follow this 
analogy. The great buffalo of Siberia can only be compared with the 
buffalo of the Indies, or amis : in the same manner, it is pretended, 
that in the elephant of India, and in the rhinoceros of Africa, are to 
be found the originals of the fossil elephant and rhinoceros, with 
which are found the bones of this buffalo. The elk of Ireland, and 
the stag of Etampes and of Scania, may indeed be compared with the 
animals of the cold countries ; but they do not approach so near to 
them, he thinks, as to invalidate his reasoning. 
The facts, then, which are hitherto collected, seem, he thinks, to 
announce, at least as plainly as imperfect documents can, that the two 
sorts of fossil ruminants belong to two orders of alluvial deposits, and 
consequently to two different geological epochs ; that the one have 
been, and are now daily being buried, in the period in which we live ; 
whilst the others have been the victims of the same revolution which 
destroyed the other fossils of the loose beds, such as the mammoths, 
the mastodons, and all the pachydermata, the genera of which now 
exist only in the torrid zone. 
