The extent of the range of the species of Chalicotherium over the great division of dry land to which that form seems to have been restricted, was considerable, viz. from France to China. In tracing it in this direction, the species appear to have lived on nearer to the present period as they were located eastward.
At Sansan, as at Eppelsheim, the remains of Chalicotherium have become petrified in beds of miocene age, now covered by later tertiaries. In the caverns of Greece (Pikermi &c.) they are associated with Upper Miocene and Old Pliocene forms. In the teeth from the Siwalik deposits, although the Chalicotherian dentine, in some degree, and as contrasted with that of the sandstone fossils of the same locality, may come into the category of the " soft fossils," yet they are far from presenting the appearance and evidence of comparatively recent unchangedness which characterizes the dentine of the teeth from the Sy-chuen cave.
Land at the eastern limits of the great Europaeo-Asiatic tract, and now forming China, may have been exempt, or much longer exempt (since it became fit to be trod by tapirs and anoplotherioids) from those alternate elevations and depressions which have destroyed, have modified, or have covered with deposits of Pliocene and Post- pliocene age the western Miocene land*.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.
Plate XXVII. Stegodon sinensis. Fig. 1. Second upper molar, d 3, grinding-surface, 2. " " outer side view. 3. " " inner side view.
Plate XXVIII. Stegodon orientalis. Fig. 1. Portion of true molar, grinding-surface. 2. " " side view. 3. Hind end of milk-molar, d 3, grinding-surface. 4. " " side view.
Hyoena sinensis. Fig. 5. Third upper premolar, right, p 3, front view. 6. " " " outer side view. 7. Second lower premolar, p 3, outer side view.
Tapirus sinensis. Fig. 8. Third upper premolar, p 3, grinding-surface. 9. Last upper molar, m 3, " "
remarkable aberrant Pachyderms that have yet been met with, closely allied to Anoplotherium, but showing a return from the ruminant tendencies of the Cuvierian species back to a more pachydermatous type, and a closer affinity with Rhinoceros, between which and A. commune it may ultimately prove to be an intermediate, form." — Paloeontological Memoirs, vol. i. p. 22, and p. 195.
- Other fossils were obtained by Mr. Swinhoe from a vendor of drugs at
Shanghai, such fossils being collected and sold as articles of the Chinese Materia Medica. An esteemed medical friend has referred me to an old work showing that fossils were collected in Europe for the same purpose in the middle ages.
VOL. XXVI. PART I. 2 H
