Critiques and Addresses Part 14

[Footnote 1: Such, at least, is the conclusion suggested by the proportions of the skeleton figured by Cuvier and De Blainville; but perhaps something between a Horse and an Agouti would be nearest the mark.]

It would be hazardous to say that _Plagiolophus_ is the exact radical form of the Equine quadrupeds; but I do not think there can be any reasonable doubt that the latter animals have resulted from the modification of some quadruped similar to _Plagiolophus_.

We have thus arrived at the Middle Eocene formation, and yet have traced back the Horses only to a three-toed stock; but these three-toed forms, no less than the Equine quadrupeds themselves, present rudiments of the two other toes which appertain to what I have termed the "average" quadruped. If the expectation raised by the splints of the Horses that, in some ancestor of the Horses, these splints would be found to be complete digits, has been verified, we are furnished with very strong reasons for looking for a no less complete verification of the expectation that the three-toed.

_Plagiolophus_-like "avus" of the horse must have had a five-toed "atavus" at some earlier period.

No such five-toed "atavus," however, has yet made its appearance among the few middle and older Eocene _Mammalia_ which are known.

Another series of closely affiliated forms, though the evidence they afford is perhaps less complete than that of the Equine series, is presented to us by the _Dichobune_ of the Eocene epoch, the _Cainotherium_ of the Miocene, and the _Tragulidae_, or so-called "Musk-deer," of the present day.

The _Tragulidae_ have no incisors in the upper jaw, and only six grinding-teeth on each side of each jaw; while the canine is moved up to the outer incisor, and there is a diastema, in the lower jaw. There are four complete toes on the hind foot, but the middle metatarsals usually become, sooner or later, ankylosed into a cannon bone. The navicular and the cuboid unite, and the distal end of the fibula is ankylosed with the tibia.

In _Cainotherium_ and _Dichobune_ the upper incisors are fully developed. There are seven grinders; the teeth form a continuous series without a diastema. The metatarsals, the navicular and cuboid, and the distal end of the fibula, remain free. In the _Cainotherium_, also, the second metacarpal is developed, but is much shorter than the third, while the fifth is absent or rudimentary. In this respect it resembles _Anoplotherium secundarium_. This circ.u.mstance, and the peculiar pattern of the upper molars in _Cainotherium_, lead me to hesitate in considering it as the actual ancestor of the modern _Tragulidae_. If _Dichobune_ has a four-toed fore foot (though I am inclined to suspect that it resembles _Cainotherium_), it will be a better representative of the oldest forms of the Traguline series; but _Dichobune_ occurs in the Middle-Eocene, and is, in fact, the oldest known artiodactyle mammal. Where, then, must we look for its five-toed ancestor?

If we follow down other lines of recent and tertiary _Ungulata_, the same question presents itself. The Pigs are traceable back through the Miocene epoch to the Upper Eocene, where they appear in the two well-marked forms of _Hyopotamus_ and _Chaeropotamus_; but _Hyopotamus_ appears to have had only two toes.

Again, all the great groups of the Ruminants, the _Bovidae, Antilopidae, Camelopardalidae_, and _Cervidae_, are represented in the Miocene epoch, and so are the Camels. The Upper Eocene _Anoplotherium_, which is intercalary between the Pigs and the _Tragulidae_, has only two or, at most, three toes. Among the scanty mammals of the Lower Eocene formation we have the perissodactyle _Ungulata_ represented by _Coryphodon, Hyra-cotherium_, and _Pliolophus_. Suppose for a moment, for the sake of following out the argument, that _Pliolophus_ represents the primary stock of the Perissodactyles, and _Dichobune_ that of the Artiodactyles (though I am far from saying that such is the case), then we find, in the earliest fauna of the Eocene epoch to which our investigations carry us, the two divisions of the _Ungulata_ completely differentiated, and no trace of any common stock of both, or of five-toed predecessors to either. With the case of the Horses before us, justifying a belief in the production of new animal forms by modification of old ones, I see no escape from the necessity of seeking for these ancestors of the _Ungulata_ beyond the limits of the Tertiary formations.

I could as soon admit special creation, at once, as suppose that the Perissodactyles and Artiodactyles had no five-toed ancestors. And when we consider how large a portion of the Tertiary period elapsed before _Anchitherium_ was converted into _Equus_, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that a large proportion of time anterior to the Tertiary period must have been expended in converting the common stock of the _Ungulata_ into Perissodactyles and Artiodactyles.

The same moral is inculcated by the study of every other order of Tertiary monodelphous _Mammalia_. Each of these orders is represented in the Miocene epoch: the Eocene formation, as I have already said, contains _Cheiroptera, Insectivora, Rodentia, Ungulata, Carnivora,_ and _Cetacea_. But the _Cheiroptera_ are extreme modifications of the _Insectivora_, just as the _Cetacea_ are extreme modifications of the Carnivorous type; and therefore it is to my mind incredible that monodelphous _Insectivora_ and _Carnivora_ should not have been abundantly developed, along with _Ungulata_, in the Mesozoic epoch.

But if this be the case, how much further back must we go to find the common stock of the monodelphous _Mammalia_? As to the _Didelphia_, if we may trust the evidence which seems to be afforded by their very scanty remains, a Hypsiprymnoid form existed at the epoch of the Trias, contemporaneously with a Carnivorous form. At the epoch of the Trias, therefore, the _Marsupialia_ must have, already existed long enough to have become differentiated into carnivorous and herbivorous forms. But the _Monotremata_ are lower forms than the _Didelphia,_ which last are intercalary between the _Ornithodelphia_ and the _Monodelphia_. To what point of the Palaeozoic epoch, then, must we, upon any rational estimate, relegate the origin of the _Monotremata_?

The investigation of the occurrence of the cla.s.ses and of the orders of the _Sauropsida_ in time points in exactly the same direction.

If, as there is great reason to believe, true Birds existed in the Tria.s.sic epoch, the ornithoscelidous forms by which Reptiles pa.s.sed into Birds must have preceded them. In fact there is, even at present, considerable ground for suspecting the existence of _Dinosauria_ in the Permian formations; but, in that case, lizards must be of still earlier date. And if the very small differences which are observable between the _Crocodilia_ of the older Mesozoic formations and those of the present day furnish any sort of approximation towards an estimate of the average rate of change among the _Sauropsida_, it is almost appalling to reflect how far back in Palaeozoic times we must go, before we can hope to arrive at that common stock from which the _Crocodilia, Lacertilia, Ornithoscelida_, and _Plesiosauria_, which had attained so great a development in the Tria.s.sic epoch, must have been derived.

The _Amphibia_ and _Pisces_ tell the same story. There is not a single cla.s.s of vertebrated animals which, when it first appears, is represented by a.n.a.logues of the lowest known members of the same cla.s.s. Therefore, if there is any truth in the doctrine of evolution, every cla.s.s must be vastly older than the first record of its appearance upon the surface of the globe. But if considerations of this kind compel us to place the origin of vertebrated animals at a period sufficiently distant from the Upper Silurian, in which the first Elasmobranchs and Ganoids occur, to allow of the evolution of such fishes as these from a Vertebrate as simple as the _Amphioxus_, I can only repeat that it is appalling to speculate upon the extent to which that origin must have preceded the epoch of the first recorded appearance of vertebrate life.

Such is the further commentary which I have to offer upon the statement of the chief results of palaeontology which I formerly ventured to lay before you.

But the growth of knowledge in the interval makes me conscious of an omission of considerable moment in that statement, inasmuch as it contains no reference to the bearings of palaeontology upon the theory of the distribution of life; nor takes note of the remarkable manner in which the facts of distribution, in present and past times, accord with the doctrine of evolution, especially in regard to land animals.

That connection between palaeontology and geology and the present distribution of terrestrial animals, which so strikingly impressed Mr. Darwin, thirty years ago, as to lead him to speak of a "law of succession of types," and of the wonderful relationship on the same continent between the dead and the living, has recently received much elucidation from the researches of Gaudry, of Rutimeyer, of Leidy, and of Alphonse Milne-Edwards, taken in connection with the earlier labours of our lamented colleague Falconer; and it has been instructively discussed in the thoughtful and ingenious work of Mr.

Andrew Murray "On the Geographical Distribution of Mammals."[1]

[Footnote 1: The paper "On the Form and Distribution of the Land-tracts during the Secondary and Tertiary Periods respectively; and on the Effect upon Animal Life which great Changes in Geographical Configuration have probably produced," by Mr. Searles V. Wood, jun., which was published in the _Philosophical Magazine_, in 1862, was unknown to me when this Address was written. It is well worthy of the most careful study.]

I propose to lay before you, as briefly as I can, the ideas to which a long consideration of the subject has given rise in my own mind.

If the doctrine of evolution is sound, one of its immediate consequences clearly is, that the present distribution of life upon the globe is the product of two factors, the one being the distribution which obtained in the immediately preceding epoch, and the other the character and the extent of the changes which have taken place in physical geography between the one epoch and the other; or, to put the matter in another way, the Fauna and Flora of any given area, in any given epoch, can consist only of such forms of life as are directly descended from those which const.i.tuted the Fauna and Flora of the same area in the immediately preceding epoch, unless the physical geography (under which I include climatal conditions) of the area has been so altered as to give rise to immigration of living forms from some other area.

The evolutionist, therefore, is bound to grapple with the following problem whenever it is clearly put before him:--Here are the Faunae of the same area during successive epochs. Show good cause for believing either that these Faunae have been derived from one another by gradual modification, or that the Faunae have reached the area in question by migration from some area in which they have undergone their development.

I propose to attempt to deal with this problem, so far as it is exemplified by the distribution of the terrestrial _Vertebrata_, and I shall endeavour to show you that it is capable of solution in a sense entirely favourable to the doctrine of evolution.

I have elsewhere[1] stated at length the reasons which lead me to recognize four primary distributional provinces for the terrestrial _Vertebrata_ in the present world, namely,--first, the _Novozelanian_, or New-Zealand province; secondly, the _Australian_ province, including Australia, Tasmania, and the Negrito Islands; thirdly, _Austro-Columbia_, or South America _plus_ North America as far as Mexico; and fourthly, the rest of the world, or _Arctogaea_, in which province America north of Mexico const.i.tutes one sub-province, Africa south of the Sahara a second, Hindostan a third, and the remainder of the Old World, a fourth.

[Footnote 1: "On the Cla.s.sification and Distribution of the Alectoromorphae;" Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1868.]

Now the truth which Mr. Darwin perceived and promulgated as "the law of the succession of types" is, that, in all these provinces, the animals found in Pliocene or later deposits are closely affined to those which now inhabit the same provinces; and that, conversely, the forms characteristic of other provinces are absent. North and South America, perhaps, present one or two exceptions to the last rule, but they are readily susceptible of explanation. Thus, in Australia, the later Tertiary mammals are marsupials (possibly with exception of the Dog and a Rodent or two, as at present). In Austro-Columbia the later Tertiary fauna exhibits numerous and varied forms of Platyrrhine Apes, Rodents, Cats, Dogs, Stags, _Edentata_, and Opossums; but, as at present, no Catarrhine Apes, no Lemurs, no _Insectivora_, Oxen, Antelopes, Rhinoceroses, nor _Didelphia_ other than Opossums. And in the wide-spread Arctogaeal province, the Pliocene and later mammals belong to the same groups as those which now exist in the province.

The law of succession of types, therefore, holds good for the present epoch as compared with its predecessor. Does it equally well apply to the Pliocene fauna when we compare it with that of the Miocene epoch?

By great good fortune, an extensive mammalian fauna of the latter epoch has now become known, in four very distant portions of the Arctogaeal province which do not differ greatly in lat.i.tude. Thus Falconer and Cautley have made known the fauna of the sub-Himalayas and the Perim Islands; Gaudry that of Attica; many observers that of Central Europe and France; and Leidy that of Nebraska, on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains. The results are very striking. The total Miocene fauna comprises many genera, and species of Catarrhine Apes, of Bats, of _Insectivora_; of Arctogaeal types of _Rodentia_; of _Proboscidea_; of equine, rhinocerotic, and tapirine quadrupeds; of cameline, bovine, antilopine, cervine, and traguline Ruminants; of Pigs and Hippopotamuses; of _Viverridae_ and _Hyaenidae_ among other _Carnivora_; with _Edentata_ allied to the Arctogaeal _Orycteropus_ and _Manis_, and not to the Austro-Columbian Edentates. The only type present in the Miocene, but absent in the existing, fauna of Eastern Arctogaea, is that of the _Didelphidae_, which, however, remains in North America.

But it is very remarkable that while the Miocene fauna of the Arctogaeal province, as a whole, is of the same character as the existing fauna of the same province, as a whole, the component elements of the fauna were differently a.s.sociated. In the Miocene epoch, North America possessed Elephants, Horses, Rhinoceroses, and a great number and variety of Ruminants and Pigs, which are absent in the present indigenous fauna; Europe had its Apes, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Tapirs, Musk-deer, Giraffes, Hyaenas, great Cats, Edentates, and Opossum-like Marsupials, which have equally vanished from its present fauna; and in Northern India, the African types of Hippopotamuses, Giraffes, and Elephants were mixed up with what are now the Asiatic types of the latter, and with Camels, and Semnopithecine and Pithecine Apes of no less distinctly Asiatic forms.

In fact the Miocene mammalian fauna of Europe and the Himalayan regions contains, a.s.sociated together, the types which are at present separately located in the South-African and Indian sub-provinces of Arctogaea. Now there is every reason to believe, on other grounds, that both Hindostan, south of the Ganges, and Africa, south of the Sahara, were separated by a wide sea from Europe and North Asia during the Middle and Upper Eocene epochs. Hence it becomes highly probable that the well-known similarities, and no less remarkable differences, between the present Faunae of India and South Africa have arisen in some such fashion as the following. Some time during the Miocene epoch, possibly when the Himalayan chain was elevated, the bottom of the nummulitic sea was upheaved and converted into dry land, in the direction of a line extending from Abyssinia to the mouth of the Ganges. By this means, the Dekhan on the one hand, and South Africa on the other, became connected with the Miocene dry land and with one another. The Miocene mammals spread gradually over this intermediate dry land; and if the condition of its eastern and western ends offered as wide contrasts as the valleys of the Ganges and Arabia do now, many forms which made their way into Africa must have been different from those which reached the Dekhan, while others might pa.s.s into both these sub-provinces.

That there was a continuity of dry land between Europe and North America during the Miocene epoch, appears to me to be a necessary consequence of the fact that many genera of terrestrial mammals, such as _Castor_, _Hystrix_, _Elephas_, _Mastodon_, _Equus_, _Hipparion_, _Anchitherium_, _Rhinoceros_, _Cervus_, _Amphicyon_, _Hyaenarctos_, and _Machairodus_, are common to the Miocene formations of the two areas, and have as yet been found (except perhaps _Anchitherium_) in no deposit of earlier age. Whether this connection took place by the east, or by the west, or by both sides of the Old World, there is at present no certain evidence, and the question is immaterial to the present argument; but, as there are good grounds for the belief that the Australian province and the Indian and South-African sub-provinces were separated by sea from the rest of Arctogaea before the Miocene epoch, so it has been rendered no less probable, by the investigations of Mr. Carrick Moore and Professor Duncan, that Austro-Columbia was separated by sea from North America during a large part of the Miocene epoch.

It is unfortunate that we have no knowledge of the Miocene mammalian fauna of the Australian and Austro-Columbian provinces; but, seeing that not a trace of a Platyrrhine Ape, of a Procyonine Carnivore, of a characteristically South-American Rodent, of a Sloth, an Armadillo, or an Ant-eater has yet been found in Miocene deposits of Arctogaea, I cannot doubt that they already existed in the Miocene Austro-Columbian province.

Nor is it less probable that the characteristic types of Australian Mammalia were already developed in that region in Miocene times.

But Austro-Columbia presents difficulties from which Australia is free; _Camelidae_ and _Tapiridae_ are now indigenous in South America as they are in Arctogaea; and, among the Pliocene Austro-Columbian mammals, the Austro-Columbian genera _Equus_, _Mastodon_, and _Machairodus_ are numbered. Are these Postmiocene immigrants, or Praemiocene natives?

Still more perplexing are the strange and interesting forms _Toxodon_, _Macrauchenia_, _Typotherium_, and a new Anoplotherioid mammal (_Homalodotherium_) which Dr. Cunningham sent over to me some time ago from Patagonia. I confess I am strongly inclined to surmise that these last, at any rate, are remnants of the population of Austro-Columbia before the Miocene epoch, and were not derived from Arctogaea by way of the north and east.

The fact that this immense fauna of Miocene Arctogaea is now fully and richly represented only in India and in South Africa, while it is shrunk and depauperized in North Asia, Europe, and North America, becomes at once intelligible, if we suppose that India and South Africa had but a scanty mammalian population before the Miocene immigration, while the conditions were highly favourable to the new comers. It is to be supposed that these new regions offered themselves to the Miocene Ungulates, as South America and Australia offered themselves to the cattle, sheep, and horses of modern colonists. But, after these great areas were thus peopled, came the Glacial epoch, during which the excessive cold, to say nothing of depression and ice-covering, must have almost depopulated all the northern parts of Arctogaea, destroying all the higher mammalian forms, except those which, like the Elephant and Rhinoceros, could adjust their coats to the altered conditions. Even these must have been driven away from the greater part of the area; only those Miocene mammals which had pa.s.sed into Hindostan and into South Africa would escape decimation by such changes in the physical geography of Arctogaea. And when the northern hemisphere pa.s.sed into its present condition, these lost tribes of the Miocene Fauna were hemmed by the Himalayas, the Sahara, the Red Sea, and the Arabian deserts, within their present boundaries. Now, on the hypothesis of evolution, there is no sort of difficulty in admitting that the differences between the Miocene forms of the mammalian Fauna and those which exist at present are the results of gradual modification; and, since such differences in distribution as obtain are readily explained by the changes which have taken place in the physical geography of the world since the Miocene epoch, it is clear that the result of the comparison of the Miocene and present Fauna is distinctly in favour of evolution. Indeed I may go further. I may say that the hypothesis of evolution explains the facts of Miocene, Pliocene, and Recent distribution, and that no other supposition even pretends to account for them. It is, indeed, a conceivable supposition that every species of Rhinoceros and every species of Hyaena, in the long succession of forms between the Miocene and the present species, was separately constructed out of dust, or out of nothing, by supernatural power; but until I receive distinct evidence of the fact, I refuse to run the risk of insulting any sane man by supposing that he seriously holds such a notion.

Let us now take a step further back in time, and inquire into the relations between the Miocene Fauna and its predecessor of the Upper Eocene formation.

Here it is to be regretted that our materials for forming a judgment are nothing to be compared in point of extent or variety with those which are yielded by the Miocene strata. However, what we do know of this Upper Eocene Fauna of Europe gives sufficient positive information to enable us to draw some tolerably safe inferences. It has yielded representatives of _Insectivora_, of _Cheiroptera_, of _Rodentia_, of _Carnivora_, of artiodactyle and perissodactyle _Ungulata_, and of opossum-like Marsupials. No Australian type of Marsupial has been discovered in the Upper Eocene strata, nor any Edentate mammal. The genera (except perhaps in the case of some of the _Insectivora_, _Cheiroptera_, and _Rodentia_) are different from those of the Miocene epoch, but present a remarkable general similarity to the Miocene and recent genera. In several cases, as I have already shown, it has now been clearly made out that the relation between the Eocene and Miocene forms is such that the Eocene form is the less specialized; while its Miocene ally is more so, and the specialization reaches its maximum in the recent forms of the same type.

So far as the Upper Eocene and the Miocene Mammalian Faunae are comparable, their relations are such as in no way to oppose the hypothesis that the older are the progenitors of the more recent forms, while, in some cases, they distinctly favour that hypothesis.

The period in time and the changes in physical geography represented by the nummulitic deposits are undoubtedly very great, while the remains of Middle Eocene and Older Eocene Mammals are comparatively few. The general facies of the Middle Eocene Fauna, however, is quite that of the Upper. The Older Eocene pre-nummulitic mammalian Fauna contains Bats, two genera of _Carnivora_, three genera of _Ungulata_ (probably all perissodactyle), and a didelphid Marsupial; all these forms, except perhaps the Bat and the Opossum, belong to genera which are not known to occur out of the Lower Eocene formation. The _Coryphodon_ appears to have been allied to the Miocene and later Tapirs, while _Pliolophus_, in its skull and dent.i.tion, curiously partakes of both artiodactyle and perissodactyle characters; the third trochanter upon its femur, and its three-toed hind foot, however, appear definitely to fix its position in the latter division.

There is nothing, then, in what is known of the older Eocene mammals of the Arctogaeal province to forbid the supposition that they stood in an ancestral relation to those of the Calcaire Grossier and the Gypsum of the Paris basin, and that our present fauna, therefore, is directly derived from that which already existed in Arctogaea at the commencement of the Tertiary period. But if we now cross the frontier between the Cainozoic and the Mesozoic faunae, as they are preserved within the Arctogaeal area, we meet with an astounding change, and what appears to be a complete and unmistakable break in the line of biological continuity.

Among the twelve or fourteen species of _Mammalia_ which are said to have been found in the Purbecks, not one is a member of the orders _Cheiroptera_, _Rodentia_, _Ungulata_, or _Carnivora_, which are so well represented in the Tertiaries. No _Insectivora_ are certainly known, nor any opossum-like Marsupials. Thus there is a vast negative difference between the Cainozoic and the Mesozoic mammalian faunae of Europe. But there is a still more important positive difference, inasmuch as all these Mammalia appear to be Marsupials belonging to Australian groups, and thus appertaining to a different distributional province from the Eocene and Miocene marsupials, which are Austro-Columbian. So far as the imperfect materials which exist enable a judgment to be formed, the same law appears to have held good for all the earlier Mesozoic _Mammalia_. Of the Stonesfield slate mammals, one, _Amphitherium_, has a definitely Australian character; one, _Phascolotherium_, may be either Dasyurid or Didelphine; of a third, _Stereognathus_, nothing can at present be said. The two mammals of the Trias, also, appear to belong to Australian groups.

Every one is aware of the many curious points of resemblance between the marine fauna of the European Mesozoic rocks and that which now exists in Australia. But if there was this Australian facies about both the terrestrial and the marine faunae of Mesozoic Europe, and if there is this unaccountable and immense break between the fauna of Mesozoic and that of Tertiary Europe, is it not a very obvious suggestion that, in the Mesozoic epoch, the Australian province included Europe, and that the Arctogaeal province was contained within other limits? The Arctogaeal province is at present enormous, while the Australian is relatively small. Why should not these proportions have been different during the Mesozoic epoch?

Thus I am led to think that by far the simplest and most rational mode of accounting for the great change which took place in the living inhabitants of the European area at the end of the Mesozoic epoch, is the supposition that it arose from a vast alteration of the physical geography of the globe; whereby an area long tenanted by Cainozoic forms was brought into such relations with the European area that migration from the one to the other became possible, and took place on a great scale.

This supposition relieves us, at once, from the difficulty in which we were left, some time ago, by the arguments which I used to demonstrate the necessity of the existence of all the great types of the Eocene epoch in some antecedent period.

It is this Mesozoic continent (which may well have lain in the neighbourhood of what are now the sh.o.r.es of the North Pacific Ocean) which I suppose to have been occupied by the Mesozoic _Monodelphia_; and it is in this region that I conceive they must have gone through the long series of changes by which they were specialized into the forms which we refer to different orders. I think it very probable that what is now South America may have received the characteristic elements of its mammalian fauna during the Mesozoic epoch; and there can be little doubt that the general nature of the change which took place at the end of the Mesozoic epoch in Europe was the upheaval of the eastern and northern regions of the Mesozoic sea-bottom into a westward extension of the Mesozoic continent, over which the mammalian fauna, by which it was already peopled, gradually spread. This invasion of the land was prefaced by a previous invasion of the Cretaceous sea by modern forms of mollusca and fish.

It is easy to imagine how an a.n.a.logous change might come about in the existing world. There is, at present, a great difference between the fauna of the Polynesian Islands and that of the west coast of America.

The animals which are leaving their spoils in the deposits now forming in these localities are widely different. Hence, if a gradual shifting of the deep sea, which at present bars migration between the easternmost of these islands and America, took place to the westward, while the American side of the sea-bottom was gradually upheaved, the palaeontologist of the future would find, over the Pacific area, exactly such a change as I am supposing to have occurred in the North-Atlantic area at the close of the Mesozoic period. An Australian fauna would be found underlying an American fauna, and the transition from the one to the other would be as abrupt as that between the Chalk and lower Tertiaries; and as the drainage-area of the newly formed extension of the American continent gave rise to rivers and lakes, the mammals mired in their mud would differ from those of like deposits on the Australian side, just as the Eocene mammals differ from those of the Purbecks.

How do similar reasonings apply to the other great change of life--that which took place at the end of the Palaeozoic period?

In the Tria.s.sic epoch, the distribution of the dry land and of terrestrial vertebrate life appears to have been, generally, similar to that which existed in the Mesozoic epoch; so that the Tria.s.sic continents and their faunae seem to be related to the Mesozoic lands and their faunae, just as those of the Miocene epoch are related to those of the present day. In fact, as I have recently endeavoured to prove to the Society, there was an Arctogaeal continent and an Arctogaeal province of distribution in Tria.s.sic times as there is now; and the _Sauropsida_ and _Marsupialia_ which const.i.tuted that fauna were, I doubt not, the progenitors of the _Sauropsida_ and _Marsupialia_ of the whole Mesozoic epoch.

Looking at the present terrestrial fauna of Australia, it appears to me to be very probable that it is essentially a remnant of the fauna of the Tria.s.sic, or even of an earlier, age[1]; in which case Australia must at that time have been in continuity with the Arctogaeal continent.

[Footnote 1: Since this Address was read, Mr. Krefft has sent us news of the discovery in Australia of a fresh-water fish of strangely Palaeozoic aspect, and apparently a Ganoid intermediate between _Dipterus_ and _Lepidosiren_.]