ADAPTS, in Zoology, the name of a genii, of Fossil I'aehydermatous (thick-skinned) mammals, described by M. Curler, in his great work ' Stir les Ossomens Fossiles,' voL iii p. 265. The word is found in Gamer, as a synonyine of the cowman rabbit (not, as stated In the reference to Cuvier just given, of the Hyrax), and is appropriated to the present genus, from the presumed similarity in sire, organization, and habits, which probably existed between the hedgehog (Hyrax and the fossil species.
The remains, upon which 31. Curler has founded this genus Adapis, the only specimen which he was able to procure during a period of twenty-five years devoted to researches after fossil bones, consist of three fragments of skulls, found in the plaster quarries of Mont martre, Paris, celebrated for the enormous quantity and variety of the remains of extinct animals which they have produced, and which, in the hands of M. Cuvier, have effected such improvements in the
kindred sciences of zoology and geology. The first of these fragments is a head, nearly perfect on the side, imbedded in the mass of gypsum which contained it ; and exhibiting the dentition nearly in a perfect form. The general outline of this skull closely resembled that of the hedgehog, but it was about one-third larger : there were four incisor teeth in each jaw, trenchant or edged and oblique; followed, on each side, by a canine tooth, of a conical form, but in other respects differing little from the molar teeth in length and figure. Of these latter there appear to have been seven in each side of each jaw. Two other fragments procured by 31. Cuvier—one n portion of a lower jaw, another of an upper jaw—served to complete his by eupplying some of the back teeth which were wanting in the more perfect specimens.