GALECYNUS, Ow.—In 1829 the fossil skeleton of a Carnivore, of the size of a fox, was discovered by Sir Roderick L Murchison in the pliocene schist of (Eningen. On a close comparison of this specimen, the writer finds that the first premolar is smaller, and the third and fourth larger than in the fox, and all the teeth are more close-set and occupy a smaller space than in the genus Canis; the bones of the feet are more robust ; and these, with other characters, indicate an extinct genus intermediate between Canis and Viverra.* The unique specimen is now in the British Museum.
Genus FELLS, L.—As it is by this form of perfect Carnivore that Cuvier chiefly illustrated his principle of the correlation • See Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. iii., 1847, p. 55.
of animal structures, it will be exemplified more particularly in this place, and by the aid of the subjoined cut (fig. 128). The founder of thus enunciates the law which he believed to guide effectively his labours of reconstructing extinct species :— a Every organized being forms a whole, a single circum scribed system, the parts of which mutually correspond and concur to the same definitive action by a reciprocal re-action. None of these parts can change without the others also changing, and consequently each part, taken separately, indi cates and gives all the others."* Cuvier did not predicate that law by an h priori method, by any of those supposed short cuts to knowledge, the fallacy of which Bacon so well exposes ; he arrived at the law induc tively, and after many dissections had revealed to him the facts—of the jaw of the Carnivore being strong by virtue of certain proportions ; of its having a peculiarly shaped and articulated condyle, with a plate of bone of breadth and height adequate for the implantation of muscles, with power to inflict a deadly bite—a process grasped by muscles of such magni tude as necessitated a certain extent of surface for their origin from the cranium, with concomitant strength and cur vature of the zygomatic arch ; the facts of the modified occi put and dorsal spines in relation to vigorous uplifting and retraction of the head when the prey had been griped ; the size and shape of the piercing, lacerating, and trenchant teeth ; the mechanism of the retractile claws, and of the joints of the limb that wielded them ;—it was not until after Cuvier had recognized these facts, and studied them and their correlations in a certain number of typical Carnivora, that he felt justified in asserting that " the form of the tooth gives that of the con dyle, of the blade-bone (8), and of the claws, just as the equa tion of a curve evolves all its properties ; and exactly as, in taking each property by itself as the base of a particular equation, one discovers both the ordinary equation and all its properties, so the claw, the blade-bone, the condyle, the femur, and all the other bones individually, give the teeth, or are given thereby reciprocally ; and in commencing by any of these, whoever possesses rationally the laws of the organic economy will be able to reconstruct the entire ani mar The principle is so evident, that the non-anatomi cal reader will have little diffi culty in satisfactorily compre hending it by the aid of the subjoined diagram.
In the jaws of the lion (fig. 128, h, In), there are large pointed teeth (laniaries or nines, e) which pierce, lacerate, and retain its prey. There are also compressed trenchant teeth (h), which play upon each other like scissor-blades in the movement of the lower upon the upper jaw. The lower jaw (m) is short and strong ; it articulates to the skull by a transversely ed convexity or condyle (d), received into a corresponding concavity (e), forming a close-fitting joint, which gives a firm attachment to the jaw, but almost restricts its movements to one plane, as in opening and closing the mouth. The plate of bone, called coronoid process (r), which gives the surface of attachment to the chief biting muscle (crotaphyte or temporal) is broad and high ; the surface on the side of the skull (tem poral fossa, t) from which that muscle arises is correspond ingly large and deep, and is augmented by the extension of ridges of bone from its upper and hinder periphery.