vir “THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES” 241 
What is the state of the case now, when, as we 
have seen, the amount of our knowledge respect- 
ing the mammalia of the Tertiary epoch is 
increased fifty-fold, and in some directions even 
approaches completeness ? 
Simply this, that, if the doctrine of evolution 
had not existed, paleontologists must have in- 
vented it, so irresistibly is it forced upon the 
mind by the study of the remains of the Tertiary 
mammalia which have been brought to light since 
1859. 
Among the fossils of Pikermi, Gaudry found 
_the successive stages by which the ancient civets 
oe. “id an 
passed into the more modern hyznas; through 
the Tertiary deposits of Western America, Marsh 
tracked the successive forms by which the ancient 
stock of the horse has passed into its present 
form ; and innumerable less complete indications of 
the mode of evolution of other groups of the 
higher mammalia have been obtained. In the 
‘remarkable memoir on the phosphorites of 
Quercy, to which I have referred, M. Filhol de- 
scribes no fewer than seventeen varieties of the 
genus Cynodictis, which fill up all the interval 
between the viverine animals and the bear-like 
dog Amphicyon ; nor do I know any solid ground 
of objection to the supposition that, in this 
Cynodictis-Amphicyon group, we have the stock 
whence all the Viveride, Felide, Hyznide, 
_ Canidee, and perhaps the Procyonide and Urside, 
pee eS 
VOL. II R 
