. The testimony of the rocks; . of perfect reproduction, the great verte-bral division receives its full development in creation. The placental mammals make their appearance, as I havesaid, in the earliest ages of the great Tertiary division, andexhibit in the group an aspect very unlike that which theyat present bear. The Eocene ages were peculiarly theages of the Palseotheres, — strange animals of that pachy-dermatous or thick-skinned order to which the elephants,the tapirs, the hogs, and the horses belong. It had beenremarked by naturalists, that there are fewer families ofthis order in liv
. The testimony of the rocks; . of perfect reproduction, the great verte-bral division receives its full development in creation. The placental mammals make their appearance, as I havesaid, in the earliest ages of the great Tertiary division, andexhibit in the group an aspect very unlike that which theyat present bear. The Eocene ages were peculiarly theages of the Palseotheres, — strange animals of that pachy-dermatous or thick-skinned order to which the elephants,the tapirs, the hogs, and the horses belong. It had beenremarked by naturalists, that there are fewer families ofthis order in living nature than of almost any other, andthat, of the existing genera, not a few are widely separatedin their analogies from the others. But in the Palaeotheres 120 THE PAL.^ONTOLOGICAL of the Eocene, wliich ranged in size from a large horse to ahare, not a few of the missing hnks have been found, —hnks connecting the tapirs to the hogs, and the hogs to thePalaeotheres proper; and there is at least one species sng- Fig. ANOPLOTHERIUM COMMUNE. (Eocene.) gestive of an union of some of the more peculiar traits ofthe tapirs and the horses. It was among these extinctPachydermata of the Paris basin that Cuvier effected hiswonderful restorations, and produced those figures in out-line which are now as famiUar to the geologist as any ofthe forms of the existing animals. The London Clay andthe Eocene of the Isle of Wight have also yielded numer-ous specimens of those pachyderms, whose identity withthe Continental ones has been established by Owen; butthey are more fragmentary, and their state of keepingless perfect, than those furnished by the gypsum quarries ofVelay and Montmartre. In these the smaller animals occuroften in a state of preservation so peculiar and partial as toexcite the curiosity of even the untaught worlanen. Onlyhalf the skeleton is present. The limbs and ribs of the underside are found lying in nearly their proper places; while ofthe limbs and ribs of the uj
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