200 Address to the British Association 



spread in earlier times, or existed in regions very remote 

 from those they now inhabit. Thus, in Eocene times there 

 existed in Europe true Opossums (now confined to America), 

 Tapirs, and a form like the African Potto before mentioned. 

 In Miocene times we had in Europe long-armed Apes 

 (creatures at present only found in Eastern Asia), with the 

 now exclusively African Secretary Bird and Cape Ant-Eater 

 {Orycteropus). In the same period the Orang — or a nearly 

 allied form — seems to have ranged over India. What are 

 more emphatically Old- World forms than the Camel, Horse, 

 and Elephant, with the typical Porcupine? Yet all these 

 existed in America in Pliocene times. Did we know the 

 Tapir in only one of the two widely-separated stations in 

 which it dwells to-day, we might well deem its evolution to 

 be due to migration and isolation. But we know from 

 palaeontology that it existed in Europe from the Eocene to 

 the Pliocene period. 



Such facts as these do not, of course, disprove the 

 doctrine that migration and isolation are necessary ante- 

 cedent conditions to specific genesis; but they show how 

 much caution must be used in drawing the conclusion that 

 they are necessary, from the distribution of animals much 

 less likely to be found fossil than mammals are. 



But an argument in favour of the views of Buffon and of 

 Wagner may be obtained from our own species, which 

 exhibits some singular coincidences between peculiarity of 

 form and isolation. Among such instances may be men- 

 tioned the Tasmanians, the Andaman islanders, and the 

 Ainos or Aborigines of Japan. One of the most striking 

 examples is that of the Eskimo — a people presenting many 

 pecuharities, some of which exaggerate the characters of the 

 highest races of mankind. Thus, the pelvis ^ differs from the 

 European pelvis in an opposite direction to that by which 



^ As before observed, ante, p. 176. 



