218 Proceedings of Learned Societies. 
tion of the bones is not as if they had been triturated by the 
violence of waves, but their processes are perfect, and their out 
lines sharp and well-defined. 3. The great proportion of antlers 
proved to have been naturally shed, and these of different stages 
of growth, to the fossil bones of the deer, proves, beyond 
question, that generations of this animal must have passed their 
existence here. 4. The Coprolites , and other phsenomena of 
Kirkdale Cavern, described by Dr. Buckland. Anticipating the 
question—how so many races of quadrupeds, now extinct, could 
have found their way hither—Prof. Owen gave a brief outline of 
the geological and zoological evidence, that England once formed 
a part of the continent from whence they came. The British 
Channel is, geologically speaking, of recent formation. At the 
time when England became an island, it is probable that the 
mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, &c., became extinct. 
This, though at a geologically recent period, was long before any 
historical records existed. 
Prof. Owen adverted then to Bumarest’s arguments in confir¬ 
mation of this opinion, derived from the specific identity of the 
wolf and the bear of France, with the same animals historically 
known to have once infested our island ; and he maintained that 
the races of some of our most familiar animals were coeval with 
the mammoth.: two species of bats, mole, badger, otter, fox, wild 
cat, mouse, hare, horse, red deer, roe; and, on the continent, the 
reindeer, beaver, wolf, Lagomys ; the aurochs of Russia, identical 
with an animal of the same kind in England. In the New 
World the same correspondence is singularly illustrated by the 
coincidence of the peculiarly zygomatic process and the dentition 
of the megatherium with that of the still living sloth. The 
Armadillo of South America is also similar to the high fossil 
Glyptodon. North America had its peculiar species of mastodon; 
but, being connected with South America at its apex, and with 
Asia, by frozen seas, at its base, in accordance with this geogra¬ 
phical condition, it was found that the mammoth of the Old 
World had migrated from the north, and the megatherium from 
the south, and that both had met in middle temperate regions of 
that continent. The fossil mammals of the newer tertiary period of 
