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PDF - Wallace Online

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CREATION BY LAW 165the Eocene Anoplotherium and Paleotherium, which are alsogeneralised or ancestral types of the tapir and rhinoceros.The recent researches of M. Gaudry in Greece have furnishedmuch new evidence of the same character. In the Miocene(or Pliocene) beds of Pikermi he has discovered the group ofthe Simocyonidse intermediate between bears and wolves ;thegenus Hysenictis which connects the hyaenas with the civets ;the Ancylotherium, which is allied both to the extinct mastodonand to the living pangolin or scaly ant-eater ;andthe Helladotherium, which connects the now isolated giraffewith the deer and antelops.Between reptiles and fishes an intermediate type has beenfound in the Archegosaurus of the Coal formation ;while theLabyrinthodon of the Trias combined characters of theBatrachia with those of crocodiles, lizards, and ganoid fishes.Even birds, the most apparently isolated of all living forms,and the most rarely preserved in a fossil state, have beenshown to possess undoubted affinities with reptiles ;and inthe Oolitic Archseopteryx, with its lengthened tail, featheredon each side, we have one of the connecting links from theside of birds ;while Professor Huxley has recently shownthat the entire order of Dinosaurians have remarkable affinitiesto birds, and that one of them, the Compsognathus, makes anearer approach to bird organisation than does Archaeopteryxto that of reptiles.Analogous facts to these occur in other classes of animals,as an example of which we have the authority of a distinguishedpaleontologist, M. Barande, quoted by Mr. Darwin, forthe statement that although the Palaeozoic Invertebrata cancertainly be classed under existing groups, yet at this ancientperiod the groups were not so distinctly separated from eachother as they are now; while Mr. Scudder tells us thatsome of the fossil insects discovered in the Coal formationof America offer characters intermediate between those ofexisting orders. Agassiz, again,insists strongly that themore ancient animals resemble the embryonic forms ofexisting species but as the; embryos of distinct groups areknown to resemble each other more than the adult animals(and in fact to be undistinguishable at a very early age), thisis the same as saying that the ancient animals are exactly

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