Carnivora—the Gallinaceous birds were controlled by the Accipitres.
"Le Règne Animal, à ces époques reculées, était composé d'aprés les mêmes lois; il comprenoit les mêmes classes, les mêmes familles que de nos jours; et en effet, parmi les divers systémes sur l'origine des êtres organisés, il n'en est pax de moins vraisemblable que celui qui en fait naître successivement les ditférens genres par des développemens ou des métamorphoses graduelles." (Cuvier, Oss. Foss. L 3, p. 297.)
This numerical preponderance of Pachydermata, among the earliest fossil Mammalia, beyond the proportion they bear among existing quadrupeds, is a remarkable fact, much insisted on by Cuvier; because it supplies, from the relics of a former world, many intermediate forms which do not occur in the present distribution of that important Order. As the living genera of Pachydermata are more widely separated from one another, than those of any other Order of Mammalia, it is important to fill these vacant intervals with the fossil genera of a former state of the earth; thus supplying links that appeared deficient in the grand continuous chain which connects all past and present forms of organic life, as parts of one great system of Creation.[1]
- ↑ An account has recently been received from India of the discovery of an unknown and very-curious fossil ruminating animal, nearly as large as an Elephant, which supplies a new and important link in the Order of Mammalia, between the Ruminantia and Puchydermata. A detailed description of this animal has been published by Dr. Falconer and Captain Cautley, who have given it the name of Savitherium, from the Sivalic or Sub-Himalayan range of hills in which it was found, between the Jumna and the Ganges. In size it exceeded the largest Rhinoceros. The head has been discovered nearly entire. The front of the skull is remarkably wide, and retains the bony cores of two short thick and straight horns, similar in position to those of the four-horned Antelope of Hindostam. The nasal bones are salient in a degree without example among Ruminants, and exceeding in this respect those of the Rhinoceros, Tapir, and Palæotherium, the only herbivorous animals that have this sort of struc-
