MACROTHERIUM, Lartet —The edentate order, which is so abundantly and variously represented in South America, which has its Orycteropes and Pangolins in Africa, and its Mauises in tropical Asia, has no living representative in Europe. Perhaps the most unexpected form of Mammal to be revealed by fossil remains from European tertiary deposits, after a Marsupial, was a member of the edentate order. Cuvier, by whom the evidence of this extinct animal was first made known, prefaces his description of the single mutilated phalangeal bone, on which that evidence was founded, by the remark, that " nothing proves better the importance of the laws of comparative osteology than all the consequences which one may legitimately draw from a single fragment." One will ingly admits the proof so afforded of the former existence of animals now unknown ; but one may demur to the conclusion that their extinction was due to some sudden catastrophe.
The single mutilated ungual phalanx on which Cuvier based his conclusions in regard to the species in question was discovered, associated with remains of Rhinoceros, Mastodon, Dinotherium, and Tapir, in a formation near Eppelsheim, Hesse-Darmstadt, which is now determined to belong to the miocene division of the tertiary series. This phalanx shows two distinctive characters of the edentate order :-1st, Its posterior surface for articulation with the antepenultimate phalanx is a double pulley, hollowed out on each side, with a salient crest between, constituting the firm kind of ginglymoid joint peculiar to certain Edentata ; 2d, The concave arch formed by that pulley curves furthest backward at its upper part, which would prevent the claw being retracted upward, as in the cat tribe, and constrain the flexion downward " ainsi c'est necessairement un ongueal To the foregoing characters are joined two others which Cuvier believed to determine " as necessarily" the genus. The spe cies of Myrmeeophaga have on the upper part of the pointed end of the claw-phalanx a groove, indicative of a disposition to bifurcate ; in the species of Manis the bifurcation is complete, the cleft extending as far as the middle of the claw-bone : so likewise in this fossil. The Pangolins (Manis) have not those
bony sheaths which, in the sloths, some ant-eaters and arma dillos, rise from the base and cover the root of the claw ; there was a like absence of any claw-sheath in the fossil. Thus the fossil claw-bone has no homologue in existing nature save those of the Manis ; and, " according to all the laws of co-existence, it is impossible to doubt that the most marked relations of the animal that bore it should have been with that genus of But what must have been its size ? The phalanx was not one of the largest on the foot—for it had not those slight raised borders which one sees in the large claw-bones of the Pangolins. This question, which Cuvier answered by the proportions of the short-tailed Maths, at 24 French feet, has had a more reasonable reply given to it by certain other bones of the skeleton subsequently discovered in the miocene tertiaries of France. These discoveries have like wise rectified and moderated the absolute application of the correlative law to the necessary determination of the genus as well as of the order. The relations of the double-jointed and cleft phalanx to the Edentata is beautifully confirmed ; but the additional fossils, and especially some evidences of teeth, have shown that it belonged to a peculiar and now extinct genus intermediate between the Mavis and the Oryderopus. And these relations are deeply interesting, on account of the geographical position of both those edentate genera, on tracts of land, viz., which are now most contiguous to the continent containing the remains of the extinct osculant genus.
The locality in France is near the village of Sansan, near Auch, department of Gers, Haute-PyremSes. The formation is a lacustrine deposit of the miocene period.