Scientific.

Otago Witness, Issue 1324, 14 April 1877, Page 3

Scientific.

EXTINCT ANIMALS.

At a recent meeting of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, an interesting lecture on this subject was delivered by Professor W. H. Flower, F.R.S., who was introduced by the President (Rev. J. H. McCheane). The lecturer described some discoveries lately made in certain districts of North America, which threw a great deal of new light upon pa3t living inhabitants of this world. When naturalists attempted to reconstruct a history of extinct animals, they had to gather evidence from fossils in rocks or stones, and from deeply buried remains of the harder and more imperishable parts of these animals, such as their bones, teeth, shells, &c. Most wonderful deposits of this kind had lately been found in the western part of North America, especially between the river Mississippi and the Pacific — a wide region, which had only of late been opened up for scientific exploration. Although only three or four scientific men had yet been labouring there, they had already discovered during the last five or six yeara almost as many strange kinds of fossil animals as all those put together which had previously been found in~every other part of the world. The discoveries thus made included some which dated so far back as the eocene Epoch of the Tertiary period. At one place the deposits were found fully a mile in depth, upon what must have been in some remote age the bottom of a great fresh water lake. Common as we thought the horse, donkey, or zebra, this species was remarkably specialized — unlike all other animals now existing, and wonderfully adapted for its own particular functions. Amongst these North American remains, there were found traces of an animal which had in the course of ages apparently developed into the horse of our own day. The earliest remains seem to represent an animal not much larger than a fox, and possessing the principal anatomical characteristics of ..the horse, but with some differences in teeth and hoofs. The later remains of succeeding epochs appeared to show the same animal becoming larger, first growing to the size of a sheep, and then as large as a donkey, whilst at the time the minor distinctions which differentiated it from the horse of our own period gradually disappeared. The same explorations had shown that once upon a time there were in North America many curious binds of rhinoceros, as well, as in the southern parts of Africa and Asia, where alone these animals are now found.

There had also been found there the remains of some creatures, apparently intermediate in their character between the sheep and the pig — different as these two classes now appear to us. The elephant was an extremely specialized animal, which seemed to have no relations now amongst existing creatures. These investigations into past life disclosed, how-, ever, that the elephant was not so isolated as we supposed, in illustration of which Professor Flower described the singular resemblance discovered in the now extinct uintaiherium. Generally, there was scarcely any group of animals now existing of which some representatives had not been found in these North American excavations, whilst there were likewise found many which we could not classify with any existing order. Of all birds at present existing, none were known to have teeth ; but there had now been found, amongst the remains in the chalk formation, distinct traces of two or three kinds of large water birds which had long rows of true teeth. There had also been found, in the same productive > field, an enormous and interesting fossil vegetation, opening up to the botanist as well as the naturalist something like a new world of past life. *