PALAEONTOLOGY AS A DISCIPLINE. 59 



expressed or implied the feeling that these matters are not 

 so simple and intelligible as we once supposed, and that 

 we are yet only upon the threshold of its solution. The 

 study of palaeontology will not tend to dispel this feeling of 

 mystery. 



Another department of biological science in which palaeon- 

 tology has proved of great value, and will become more and 

 more so in the future, is that which deals with the geograph- 

 ical distribution and migrations of organisms. Though not a 

 branch of morphology, this subject has a very significant 

 bearing upon that science, and cannot be ignored in any com- 

 prehensive theory of evolution. This, again, is too large a 

 field to enter upon at the close of a lecture. It must suffice, 

 therefore, to hint at the many cases in the existing distribu- 

 tion of animals, which seem so puzzling and capricious, and 

 which are so readily explained by a study of the past. That 

 the nearest allies of the South American llamas should be the 

 camels of the Old World seems unaccountable until we learn 

 that North America was the original home of the entire tribe. 

 The occurrence of the tapirs in South America and in the 

 Malay Peninsula becomes intelligible enough when we learn 

 that this genus is of very high antiquity, and was formerly 

 represented in every part of the northern hemisphere. 



The more fully the past is recovered the more completely 

 the former land connections of the various continents are made 

 out, the more comprehensible do the seeming anomalies of the 

 present order of things become, — a proposition which applies 

 to more than problems of geographical distribution. 



The foregoing consideration of palaeontology as a branch of 

 morphological science is necessarily brief and very inadequate, 

 but it will suffice, I trust, to show that its claims upon the 

 attention of morphologists should not be ignored, and that it 

 is admirably fitted to throw light upon many obscure problems. 

 In conclusion, let me point out that final and lasting results 

 are not to be gained by an exclusive adherence to any method 

 of morphological inquiry, but by a combination of all of them. 

 Each is able to supplement the others, and it is folly to reject 

 such aid. Already most encouraging results have followed 



