114—16 INDIAN TERTIARY AND POST-TERTIARY VERTEBRATA. 
nearly allied to the giraffe. The specimen, which only lacks the inferior condyles, 
was obtained by Mr. Theobald from the Siwaliks of the Punjab. Below, the dimen- 
sions of this bone are compared with those of the metatarsus of a medium-sized 
giraffe in the Indian Museum, and also with those of a larger specimen of the 
same bone given by Professor Gaudry in his description of the remains of the 
Pikermi giraffe. 
Specimen. 
Giraffe. 
Length of complete bone ..... 
(?) 20-5 
26^5— 28 5 
Length to condylar junction .... 
190 
25-0—270 
Transverse diameter above condyles 
3-2 
Circumference of shaft . 
8-6 
These dimensions show that the fossil bone is much shorter, and relatively 
stouter than the metatarsus of the African giraffe. In its general form and propor- 
tions, however, the bone comes nearer to the latter bone than to the metatarsus of 
any other animal, and the general resemblance is so close as to leave little doubt that 
the animal to which the bone belonged must have been a member of the same 
family as the giraffe. Its greater shortness, on the other hand, connects this bone 
with the sivatheroid animals, and thus bridges over the gap hitherto existing be- 
tween these animals and the giraffes, and renders it difficult to refer them to two 
different families. 
The bone is longer and slighter than the metatarsus referred by Falconer and 
Cautley to Sivatherium giganieum 1 (plate xvii, figure 2), although that bone, if 
rightly named, judging from the length of the metacarpus (ibid, figure 1), is an 
unusually long specimen. The bone before us is further distinguished from 
the anterior “ cannon-bone ” of Sivatherium by the relatively smaller size of its 
terminal expansions, and the greater degree of development of the grooves on its 
anterior and posterior aspects. All these divergences from the Sivatherium type 
approximate to that of the giraffe. 
The metatarsus of Helladothevium (plate xvii, figure 4) is distinguished by 
being much shorter and stouter ; and, judging from the shape of the metacarpus 
(ibid., figure 10), and the lower half of a metatarsus in the Indian Museum, the 
metatarsus of By daspitherium is also a shorter and stouter bone. 
An inferior extremity of the metacarpus of Bramatherium , in the Indian 
Museum, shows that the “cannon-bones ” of that genus were likewise of a more 
massive type than the bone before us. 
There now only remains Vishnutherium , among the known genera of Indian 
giraffoids, to which this specimen can possibly belong, and as it is of about the 
right dimensions to have belonged to the same animal as the teeth of that genus, it 
A note on the reference of this bone will be given under the head of Sivatherium. 
