CREATION BY LAW 165 



the Eocene Anoplotherium and Paleotherium, which are also 

 generalised or ancestral types of the tapir and rhinoceros. 

 The recent researches of M. Gaudry in Greece have furnished 

 much new evidence of the same character. In the Miocene 

 (or Pliocene) beds of Pikermi he has discovered the group of 

 the Simocyonidse intermediate between bears and wolves ; the 

 genus Hysenictis which connects the hyaenas with the civets ; 

 the Ancylotherium, which is allied both to the extinct mas- 

 todon and to the living pangolin or scaly ant-eater ; and 

 the Helladotherium, which connects the now isolated giraffe 

 with the deer and antelops. 



Between reptiles and fishes an intermediate type has been 

 found in the Archegosaurus of the Coal formation ; while the 

 Labyrinthodon of the Trias combined characters of the 

 Batrachia 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 been 

 shown to possess undoubted affinities with reptiles ; and in 

 the Oolitic Archseopteryx, with its lengthened tail, feathered 

 on each side, we have one of the connecting links from the 

 side of birds ; while Professor Huxley has recently shown 

 that the entire order of Dinosaurians have remarkable affinities 

 to birds, and that one of them, the Compsognathus, makes a 

 nearer approach to bird organisation than does Archaeopteryx 

 to that of reptiles. 



Analogous facts to these occur in other classes of animals, 

 as an example of which we have the authority of a distin- 

 guished paleontologist, M. Barande, quoted by Mr. Darwin, for 

 the statement that although the Palaeozoic Invertebrata can 

 certainly be classed under existing groups, yet at this ancient 

 period the groups were not so distinctly separated from each 

 other as they are now; while Mr. Scudder tells us that 

 some of the fossil insects discovered in the Coal formation 

 of America offer characters intermediate between those of 

 existing orders. Agassiz, again, insists strongly that the 

 more ancient animals resemble the embryonic forms of 

 existing species ; but as the embryos of distinct groups are 

 known to resemble each other more than the adult animals 

 (and in fact to be undistinguishable at a very early age), this 

 is the same as saying that the ancient animals are exactly 



