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farther on, towards the north-east, it rests on the calcaire grossier (London clay formation), into which it enters and forms the osseous fissures which we have discovered at Vendargars, in the forest of St. Antoine, and in the quarries of St. Julien. It is most clearly seen near the town of Lunel, where is the cavern containing the bones into which this diluvium rushed, leaving around great heaps of this very red earth, gravel and pebbles, which are to be met with in great abundance, particularly on the borders of the high road from Montpelier to Nantes, at the hill of Montregret.

Nothing, therefore, in geology appears to us better established than this opinion, that the result of the last revolution of the globe was a vast inundation which covered our continents; overwhelmed the plains and small hills with mud and gravel, filling up the grottoes and crevices, carrying with it the animals it met in its progress, and precipitating them into the pits over which it rushed, and of which many had served as dens for wild beasts; that all the animals, as the elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, which are now found only in the torrid zone, inhabited our climate; and the discovery which we have made recently at Pezuas, of the elk and the reindeer, associated with the elephant and the hippopotamus, is an additional proof in favour of M. Cuvier's opinion, that the elephants and rhinoceroses of the ancient world were inhabitants of cold countries.

Having then announced the existence of a new fossil hyæna, and offered our reflections regarding its habits, the places it inhabited, and the causes of its destruction, we must revert to our third fossil species, observing that what we have said with respect to the first applies naturally to this one, and that we do not attribute its presence in the same cavern to any other causes than we have assigned for the last, viz., that there also it had chosen its den; in fine, that the same cause of destruction overwhelmed them at the same time, and that at an epoch anterior to any recorded in history.

After having admitted two species of living hyænas, the striped and the spotted, M. Cuvier says that there exists in the Museum of Natural History at Paris, a hyæna, but of what country it is a native he is ignorant, and which he believes to form a third species, or to be a variety of the striped hyæna. Its skin is neither striped nor spotted; it is less strong than the other two species; and its teeth closely resemble those of the striped hyæna, only that the internal tubercle of the posterior lobe of the last lower molar tooth is less sharp, less prominent than in the striped hyæna. Here, then, are teeth in which the characters are perfectly similar to those in our third species of fossil hyæna in the cavern of Lunel Viel. These teeth of the lower jaw have two cutting lobes; they have a prominence in their posterior part, and a tubercle round the base of the posterior lobe, but this tubercle is very much less than in the teeth of the striped living and fossil hyæna; and an important particular which distinguishes them also from every other species is, that this tubercle is not in the same place as in the other species; it is much

more behind, and joins the other prominence, from which, nevertheless, it is quite distinct. The ledge or collar of the anterior part is scarcely perceptible. I am ignorant if all this hold good with the hyæna from an unknown country of which M. Cuvier speaks, for he is silent on this point which it would be curious to verify. In Fig. 3, we give a representation of this tooth, presuming that all those we have mentioned still adhere to the jaw-bones, and are preceded by many others which have all the characters of the teeth of hyænas, so that it is certain they do not belong to any other carnivorous animal, and it is only to avoid a useless multiplication of figures that we have given it singly.

This would be the place to discuss many interesting questions. relative to other parts of the skeleton of the fossil hyænas of the new species it is to be presumed that objects would not be wanting; for in the great number of bones that we have seen in the public collections of Montpellier, there are heads belonging to different species; but hoping that the researches which government is causing to be made in the cavern of Lunel Viel, will enable us to examine a greater number of objects, we shall defer speaking of them till those labours are terminated.

Although we have expressed ideas apparently very different from those which M. Marcel de Serres has published in his different memoirs on caverns and fissures containing bones, our opinion does not differ in the end from his, but in a few points which are most essential in the question we have been discussing. The important point is to consider the fissures and caverns as filled up at the same time by a general cause; and on this fact we agree with him, but we differ in this: he supposing that the animals, the remains of which are found in our caverns, were all carried thither by a current alone; while we, on the contrary, suppose, that the strange collection of these animals in the same place is principally owing to successive generations of hyænas having inhabited these caverns; thinking, however, that among the bones some may have been brought by the inundation which filled up these same caverns with mud and pebbles.

Fig. 1. The last molar tooth (carnassière) of the lower jaw of the

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Cape Hyæna. hyæna of the Levant. of a third fossil hyæna.

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-Mémoires de la Societé d'Histoire Naturelle.

29. Description of a Pastenaca (Raia Pastenaca of Humboldt), from the river Meta in South America.

By M. Roulin.

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Fig. 1. The pastenaca of Humboldt, under side...

Fig. 2.

Ditto

ditto, upper side.

Fig. 3. Double sting of the tail of a pastenaca about one-fourth larger than that of which I have given the dimensions,

The rays, and even the cartilaginous fishes in general, with the exception of the petromyzons, the lampreys, are considered at Yet pastethe present day as belonging exclusively to the sea. nacas exist in many rivers of southern America, and sometimes many different species of them are met with in the same waters. Thus, in the upper part of the Meta, in the province of Saint Martin, there is a spotted pastenaca, and also a black one, which I now make known, distinguishing it by the name of the celebrated traveller, whose labours have thrown most light upon the natural history of this country. The two pastenacas which served me for this description, were harpooned by a fisherman of the village of Giramena; in size they were exactly similar; when presented to me, they were mutilated, the tail being cut off above the sting, for fear that any one who handled them imprudently should be hurt, but the stings themselves had been preserved, they being used as points to the long arrows, which are poisoned with the Woorara. I procured one of these stings, which I have since deposited in the collection of the Museum of Natural History of Paris; the end of the tail upon which it was supported, had been stripped of its skin, so that I could not personally ascertain if this tail wanted, as they assured me it did, a fin at its extremity. The shape of the body of this pastenaca is elliptical, the back of a dark olive brown colour, marked with small black converging lines, which together form a curve, terminating in several sloping faces; the eyes are small, prominent, placed on a sort of peduncle, directed upwards, a little outwards and forwards: immediately behind, and a little outwards, there exists on each side a rather large opening, which dips under the peduncle of the eyes. The belly is very white in the middle; the mouth, curved, is furnished with blunt teeth, arranged symmetrically; in front is the opening of the nostrils, separated by a septum, covered in part by a loose flap, the wings of which, on each side, are entirely detached. Behind the mouth is the branchial apparatus, of an oval form, and occupying more than a third of the length of the body; it is formed of six double ranges of branchiæ, each having their orifice at the external part. The tail is round, slightly conical; at symmetrical distances, it has spines nearly like those of our thornback or skate, and towards the union of the posterior third with the anterior two-thirds, one or two long flattened stings, terminated by a very sharp point, and serrated in a reverse direction on both sides, which slant off to an edge: from this disposition, it results, that when the ray strikes with its sting, it enters with facility, but comes out with difficulty, making a lacerated and very painful wound, sometimes, it is said, followed by death. The fisherman had on his leg the scar of a wound from a ray; he had also heard it said that it occasioned death, but none of those whom he had known had felt from it such fatal effects: some persons had required a long time to be healed, and he was not certain if all had been so. The Indians of San Martin eat the black pastenaca; as to the other, they believe its flesh to be venomous; on which ac

count perhaps it is that it is sometimes called raya cascabel, the crotalus ray; perhaps, also, it may be from the brown colour spotted with yellow of its back, which resembles the skin of a rattle-snake, which is very common in that province. The dimensions of the largest ray, in English feet and inches, are as follow:

Longest diameter of the body, i. e. from the anterior part of the ft. in.
circumference to the anus

Smaller diameter of the ellipse

From the anterior part of the nose to the mouth

From the mouth to the anterior part of the branchiæ

Greater diameter of the branchial apparatus

Circumference of the tail at its insertion

From the posterior part of the branchial apparatus to the anus

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Thickness of the body in the middle

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0 3.0

All the fishermen assured me that there were much larger rays than those of which I have given the representation.-Annales des Sci. Nat., Jan.

Dr. Roulin having passed six years in South America, during which time he bestowed much attention on subjects of natural history, we should feel much hesitation in differing from his opinion; but as only two pastenacas, and but the sting of one, fell under his observation, we take the liberty of suspecting that he has fallen into what is by no means an unprecedented error, in attributing to this fish a double sting. In the marine species this weapon is annually cast, and as it happens frequently that the new spine has attained considerable size before the old one has been shed, the pastenaca is occasionally found with two, in which state it has been considered improperly as a distinct species.-Note by the Editor.

30. Description of a New Species of Ovula from the Indian Ocean. By M. Duclos.-Ovula Punctata. O testâ ovato-oblonga, inflatâ, albâ, utrinque subrostratâ, striatâ, rubro-punctatâ ; labro marginato; columellâ anterius concavâ.

This small and unusually elegant shell is particularly remarkable for the delicacy of its striæ and its dorsal punctuation, both arranged differently from what has hitherto been met with in the different species composing the genus ovula. Its shape is an oblong oval inflated; it is white, the back ornamented with six round reddish points placed uniformly two and two; the right lip bevelled off and finely dentated within; the left, or columellar, is very smooth and concave, in the form of a groove. This species, which is only 0.28 of an inch long, is one of the prettiest of the genus. It is found in the Isle of Bourbon-Mém. de la Société d'Hist, Nat.

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