Not a few of the other mammalia of the Limagne belong undoubtedly to genera and species elsewhere proper to the Lower Miocene. Thus, for example, the Cainotherium of Bravard, a genus not far removed from the Anoplotherium, is represented by several species, one of which, as I learn from Mr. Waterhouse, agrees with _Microtherium Renggeri_ of the Mayence basin. In like manner, the _Amphitragulus elegans_ of Pomel, an Auvergne fossil, is identified by Waterhouse with _Dorcatherium nanum_ of Kaup, a Rhenish species from Weissenau, near Mayence. A small species, also, of rodent, of the genus Titanomys of H. von Meyer, is common to the Lower Miocene of Mayence and the Limagne d’Auvergne, and there are many other points of agreement which the discordance of nomenclature tends to conceal. A remarkable carnivorous genus, the Hyænodon of Laizer, is represented by more than one species. The same genus has also been found in the Upper Eocene marls of Hordwell Cliff, Hampshire, just below the level of the Bembridge Limestone, and therefore a formation older than the Gypsum of Paris. Several species of opossum (_Didelphis_) are met with in the same strata of the Limagne. The total number of mammalia enumerated by M. Pomel as appertaining to the Lower Miocene fauna of the Limagne and Velay falls little short of a hundred, and with them are associated some large crocodiles and tortoises, and some Ophidian and Batrachian reptiles. Lower Molasse of Switzerland.—The two upper divisions of the Swiss Molasse—the one fresh-water, the other marine—have already been described in the preceding chapter. I shall now proceed to treat of the third division, which is of Lower Miocene age. Nearly the whole of this Lower Molasse is fresh-water, yet some of the inferior beds contain a mixture of marine and fluviatile shells, the _Cerithium margaritaceum,_ a well-known Lower Miocene fossil, being one of the marine species. Notwithstanding, therefore, that some of these Lower Miocene strata consist of old shingle-beds several thousand feet in thickness, as in the Rigi, near Lucerne, and in the Speer, near Wesen, mountains 5000 and 7000 feet above the sea, the deposition of the whole series must have begun at or below the sea-level. The conglomerates, as might be expected, are often very unequal in thickness, in closely adjoining districts, since in a littoral formation accumulations of pebbles would swell out in certain places where rivers entered the sea, and would thin out to comparatively small dimensions where no streams or only small ones came down to the coast. For ages, in spite of a gradual depression of the land and adjacent sea-bottom, the rivers continued to cover the sinking area with their deltas; until finally, the subsidence being in excess, the sea of the Middle Molasse gained upon the land, and marine beds were thrown down over the dense mass of fresh-water and brackish-water deposit, called the Lower Molasse, which had previously accumulated.