The skull to which Cunningham refers, consists of little more than the jaws, but luckily nearly all the teeth are in place, and prove it to be an entirely new ungulate mammal with teeth in uninterrupted series like Anoplotherium, about as big as a small horse.
What a wonderful assemblage of beasts there seems to have been in South America! I suspect if we could find them all they would make the classification of the Mammalia into a horrid mess.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[And on July 16, 1869, he writes again to Darwin:—]
To tell you the truth, what with fossils, Ethnology and the great question of "Darwinismus" which is such a worry to us all, I have lost sight of the collectors and naturalists "by grace of the dredge," almost as completely as you have.
[Indeed, the pressure was so great that he resolved to give up the
Hunterian Lectures at the College of Surgeons, as he had already given
up the Fullerian Professorship at the Royal Institution. So he writes to
Professor (afterwards Sir William) Flower:—]
Jermyn Street, June 7, 1869.
PRIVATE, CONFIDENTIAL, PARTICULAR.
My dear Flower,