the earth--and the great agents of nature were
silently depositing in the congregating and shifting earths dead
images of the prevailing life. Ages roll on as the reptiles give place
to higher animal organisation developed in carnivora, the quickening
blood warms, and then as the sovereign of all the grades of life,
erect and gifted with reason, comes man. Something of this vast and
half-told progress is shown in the range of fossil cases with which
the visitor is engaged. He has passed the era of reptiles and fishes,
and on entering the sixth and last room of the gallery, he will notice
the higher series of fossils. The distribution of the

FOSSIL MAMMALIA

in this room is very striking; the central space being fully occupied
by the cast of the wonderful megatherium of the Pampas, and the
skeleton of the North American mastodon. The megatherium is described
zoologically as having combined the characteristics of the armadillo,
sloth, and ant-eater. In height it averaged eight feet; its feet were
a yard in length; and its claws were of terrible strength; it was
encased in an impenetrable scaly armour; and it lived upon roots. The
mastodon was of the elephant kind. But the gigantic tapir described by
Baron Cuvier, or the dinotherium, supposed by the Baron to have
reached the extraordinary height of eighteen feet, of which only
partial remains have been found, and are here deposited, is the
largest fossil mammalia yet discovered. It is said to have had the
habits of the walrus. The southern wall cases of the room contain a
fine collection of the fossil remains of elephants and mastodons,
chiefly from the Sewalik Hills of northern India. The third case (c)
is filled with Brazilian fossils of varieties of the megatherium,
monkeys, &c. On the right of the entrance from the fifth room are some
fossil mammalia from Montmartre arranged by Cuvier. Having wandered
about amid these suggestive wrecks of the remote past, the visitor
should approach the central upright case placed against the western
wall of this noble room. Here is a fossil of part of a human skeleton,
the possession of which our geologists owe to the fortune of war--it
having been found on board a French ship captured by an English
cruiser. As the visitor will perceive, the skull is wanting, but this
important part is said to lie in an American museum. However, the
spine, the thigh bones, and the ribs are distinctly visible. This
precious relic was extracted, wit