410 
When the complicated form of a vertebra, with its various cavities 
and projections, is attended to, it must be plainly seen, that few of 
these bones, when found, can be extricated from their stony matrix, 
but with so much injury, as can hardly fail to destroy those parts, the 
examination of which is necessary to the determination of their cha- 
racters. The skeletons already noticed, and particularly the two skele- 
tons of the Anoplotherium, furnished M. Cuvier with that information, 
however, which rendered his subsequent examination of the separate 
vertebra more satisfactory than it would otherwise have been. 
There appears to be no room, for doubting, that in the Anoplothe- 
rium commune, there were seven vertebras in the neck, twelve or 
thirteen in the back, six in the loins, three in the sacrum, and twenty- 
two in the tail. The number of those in the trunk agree with the 
greatest part of the ruminants ; but those of the tail are much more 
numerous than are in general seen in this tribe : the kanguroo ap- 
proaches the nearest in this respect, but it has only nineteen. 
In the lumbar vertebrae of this animal, the anterior articular apo- 
physes are hooked, by which they embrace the posterior apophyses of 
the preceding vertebrae ; a species of structure which exists, more or 
less, in the ruminants and in the hog, but not in the horse or tapir. 
A curiously formed inferior spinous apophysis is observable on some 
of these vertebrae ; respecting the use of which, M. Cuvier hesitatingly 
queries — “ Were the inferior muscles of the great tail, which charac- 
terize this animal, inserted there ?” The angular bones were of con- 
siderable size in this extraordinary animal, showing that the muscles 
of the tail were exceedingly powerful. 
In addition to these animals, he obtained from these quarries half 
the jaw of a small carnivorous animal, and was much surprised at 
finding that, of the genus Canis, to which it appeared to belong, not 
the jaw of any species agreed with it. It appears, therefore, probable, 
that this carnivorous animal, like the herbivorous we have been de- 
scribing, is of a species at present unknown. This would be certain, 
