There exists in the Museum of Natural History in Paris only a copy of the bone of the whale of the Rue Dauphine, which received the name of Balænodon Lamanoni. The examination of this figure by Cuvier led him to recognise it as a bone belonging to one of the antediluvian Balænæ, which differed not only from the living species, but from all others known up to this time.
Since the days of Lamanon, other bones of Balæna have been discovered in the soil in different countries, but the study of these fossils has always left something to be desired. In 1806 a fossil Balæna was disinterred at Monte-Pulgnasco by M. Cortesi. Another skeleton, seventy-two feet long, was found on the banks of the river Forth, near Alloa, in Scotland. In 1816 many bones of this animal were discovered in a little valley formed by a brook running into the Chiavana, one of the affluents of the Po.
Cuvier has established, among the cetacean fossils, a particular genus, which he designates under the name of Ziphius. The animals to which he gave the name, however, are not identical either with the Whales (Balænæ), the Cachelots or Sperm Whales, or with the Hyperoodons. They hold, in the order of Cetaceans, the place that the Palæotherium and Anoplotherium occupy among the Pachyderms, or that which the Megatherium and Megalonyx occupy in the order of the Edentates. The Ziphius still lives in the Mediterranean.
Fig. 178.—Pecten Jacobæus.
(Living species.)
The genera of Mollusca, which distinguish this period from all others, are very numerous. They include the Cardium, Panopæa, Pecten ([Fig. 178]), Fusus, Murex, Cypræa, Voluta, Chenopus, Buccinum, Nassa, and many others.
The Pliocene series prevails over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, where it is popularly known as the Crag. In Essex it rests directly on the London Clay. Near Norwich it rests on the Chalk.