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Both the shells and quadrupeds belonging to the later stone period and to the age of bronze consist exclusively of species now living in Europe, the fauna being the same as that which flourished in Gaul at the time when it was conquered by Julius Caesar, even the Bos primigenius, the only animal of which the wild type is lost, being still represented, according to Cuvier, Bell, and Rutimeyer, by one of the domesticated races of cattle now in Europe.
The tertiary formations especially show the primitive history of many vertebrates in very instructive forms of transitions which, for instance, Rütimeyer, a scientist who is very cautious in his conclusions, very distinctly traced to the horse, to the ruminating animals, and lately also to the turtles.
But with respect to the ancient Germans, there certainly was among them one very prevalent form of head, and even the varieties of feature which occur among the Marcomans for example, on Marcus Aurelius column all seem to oscillate round one central type. The Graverow Type This is the Graverow type of Ecker, the Hohberg type of His and Rutimeyer, the Swiss anatomists.
So again I have lately acquired decisive evidence that the crossed offspring from the Indian humped and common cattle are inter se perfectly fertile; and from the observations by Rutimeyer on their important osteological differences, as well as from those by Mr. Blyth on their differences in habits, voice, constitution, etc., these two forms must be regarded as good and distinct species.
In the later division of the stone period, there were two tame races of the pig, according to Rutimeyer; one large, and derived from the wild boar, the other smaller, called the "marsh-hog," or Sus scrofa palustris. It may be asked how the osteologist can distinguish the tame from the wild races of the same species by their skeletons alone.
On the whole, however, the divergence of the domestic races from their aboriginal wild types, as exemplified at Wangen and Moosseedorf, is confined, according to Professor Rutimeyer, within narrow limits.
M. Gaudry has arranged the species of Hyoenidoe, Proboscidea, Rhinocerotidoe, and Equidoe in their order of filiation from their earliest appearance in the Miocene epoch to the present time, and Professor Rütimeyer has drawn up similar schemes for the Oxen and other Ungulata with what, I am disposed to think, is a fair and probable approximation to the order of nature.
Subsequent research has brought to light multitudes of facts of the same order; and at the present day, the investigations of such anatomists as Rutimeyer and Gaudry have tended to fill up, more and more, the gaps in our existing series of mammals, and to connect groups formerly thought to be distinct.
For the third calculation, communicated to me by M. Morlot, we are indebted to M. Victor Gillieron, of Neuveville, on the Lake of Bienne. It relates to the age of a pile-dwelling, the mammalian bones of which are considered by M. Rutimeyer to indicate the earliest portion of the stone period of Switzerland, and to correspond in age with the settlement of Moosseedorf.
I may remark that Rütimeyer has shown that several wild mammals in Switzerland since the neolithic period have had their dentition and, I think, general size slightly modified.
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