Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/128

104 Captain of Engineers, Cochetaux. All the bones are admirably preserved; and, if the teeth are detached from the maxillaries, we at least have the exact indication of their number, place, and size, by the disposition of the alveoles. These two heads belong to animals which ought evidently to form a new genus, characterized by thirty-two teeth regularly spaced in the middle part of the jaws.

"Finally, among the mammifers which inhabited that sea are also found littoral species; of the seals, some of which attained to grand proportions, we possess divers fragments of skeletons and of teeth, which leave no doubt of the presence of these singular amphibians in the ancient seas of these latitudes.

"The Government, seconded by the intelligent zeal of several officers of engineers, has specially charged the Viscomte B. du Bas, to see to the conservation of these precious relics; and we shall have the occasion, we believe, to present a tolerably complete history of one of the most singular and most interesting of the antediluvian animals which have been discovered.

We speak next of the Squalodon, and we shall enter into some details of the history of this curious group of fossil carnivora.

"Some years ago (1844) the Doctor Albert Koch returned from North America, with a rich cargo of fossil bones belonging to strange animals. They had been exhibited already in public before their departure for Europe. They were successively shown in the principal towns of Germany, at Dresden, Berlin, and Leipsic.

"This exhibition made a great noise, and one can comprehend why it could not be otherwise. An animal more than a hundred feet long, having head of an extraordinary form, jaws furnished with teeth such as were not known, and which in spite of its immoderate length, bore two small pairs of limbs:—it was a gigantic serpent suspended before and behind by a pair of fins.

"Curiosity was raised to the highest point. The friends of the marvellous found in it ample food for suppositions of every kind, and the savants themselves did not know whether they ought to believe their eyes or their principles.

"Numerous papers were produced on the occasion. The American naturalists, in the first place, took this animal for a reptile and gave it the name of Basilosaurus.

Three or four years after the discovery of these remains, the French and English zoologists (Dumeril, Buckland, and Owen) made of them on the contrary mammifer; and Owen did not hesitate, after the examination of a fragment, to assign it to the walruses, proposing the name of Zeuglodon, which it still retains.

"In Germany, after the public exhibition of these numerous pieces, opinions were divided.

"In reality the vertebræ of several individuals had been grouped toge-