Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T15:50:11.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

II.—On the Systematic Position of the Sivatherium giganteum of Falconer and Cautley1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

James Murie
James Murie
Affiliation:
Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, Middlesex Hospital, and the Prosector to the Zoological Society
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

1. Introductory.—The fragmentary evidence attesting the presence of former tenants of our globe is just sufficiently tantalizing to permit of glimpses of bygone forms to be evoked; and what is lacking in the relics themselves is supplied by the imagination or reasoned out by the aid of existing forms. Palæontology, in truth, is based as yet on a narrow but solid foundation of fact, propped up by much that is uncertain or unstable, which future time must test, try,—accept, or reject. For this reason all adventitious drapery thrown around the remnants of the departed requires to undergo a close scrutiny of its genuineness; and no seeming fittingness can save it from the ruth- less hands of succeeding inquirers should any counterfeit be detected.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 8 , Issue 88 , October 1871 , pp. 438 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1871

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Read at the Meeting of the British Association, Edinburgh, 1871.

References

page 439 note 1 A number of figures of the cranium are to be found in the “Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis,” xci. and xcii., and in unpublished proof-plates of same, now in the Geological Department of the British Museum. Also in Royle's “Illustrations of the Botany of the Himalayas,” vol. ii., pl. vi. See likewise Journ. Asiatic Soc., vols. iv., v. and vi., for descriptions and figures of various bones. Lastly, consult Dr. Charles Murchison's edition of the “Palæontological Memoirs and Notes” of the late Hugh Falconer, M.A., M.D. (Lond., 1868), vol. i., pp. 247–279, where the original paper above mentioned and copious MS. notes are published, accompanied with eight figures, plates 19, 20, and 21.

page 439 note 2 I refer both to the original paper and the posthumous MS. notes printed in Dr.Murchison's collected edition of his palæontological labours.

page 440 note 1 Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1866, p. 105.Google Scholar

page 442 note 1 “Spicilegia Zoologica.” Berlin, 1777.Google Scholar

page 442 note 2 Vide Proc. Zool. Soc. 1870, pp. 451, 503, figs. 4, 5, 8, and 12 respectively.Google Scholar

page 443 note 1 In three communications laid before the Zool. Soc., respectively published in Proc. 1848–9–50.

page 444 note 1 This North American form, the Megacerops Colorodensis, has been determined and named by Dr. Linz from fragments described by him at the Meeting of the Acad. of Nat. Science, Philadelphia, Jan. 1870.

page 444 note 2 Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis.

page 444 note 3 “Odontography,” p. 535.

page 445 note 1 Vide respectively Drs. Gray and Sclater, Ann. and Mag. Hist., 1866, pp. 326, 401, and a previous paper by the latter, Brit. Assoc. Report, 1866.Google Scholar

page 447 note 1 Witness the remarks, and genealogical tabular views in the “Animaux Fossiles de l' Attique” of M. Albert Gandry (Paris, 1862): also Rütimeyer's “Beitrage pal. Gesch. der Wiederkauer,” Basel, 1865, and various other late writers.

page 448 note 1 I refer the reader to Dr. Malcolmson's Geological Deductions, etc., Geol. Trans. ser. 2, vol. v., p. 570Google Scholar Journ. Bombay Geograph. Soc. 1841–44, p. 371; and Falconer's criticism thereon in his “Fossils of Perim Island.”Google Scholar