LATER TERTIAEIES. 161 



dinornis. This preponderance of bulky frameworks, and 

 the number of intermediate forms that serve as connecting 

 links between species now widely separate, are perhaps the 

 most notable features of the tertiary fauna, and are highly 

 suggestive to the physiologist, who, rising above mere de- 

 scription, strives to attain to the higher knowledge of crea- 

 tional method and law. 



The diversified latitudes over which tertiary deposits are 

 spread, and the difficulty of assigning a contemporaneity to 

 strata containing few or no species in common, compels the 

 palaeontologist often to deal with the details of the respec- 

 tive areas rather than attempt a generalised expression for 

 the whole. Enough for our outline, however, to remark 

 that as sea and land approach their present configuration, 

 the fossil flora and fauna begin in like manner to assume 

 that distinctive impress which now characterises existing 

 nature. As already stated, many of the Old World forms 

 are unknown in the New ; some of those that characterise 

 the tertiaries of India are unknown in the strata of Europe ; 

 and only a few, and these during the earlier stages of the 

 period, appear to have anything like a cosmopolitan exten- 

 sion. So also in the earliest or eocene stage the number 

 of existing species are few compared with the extinct ; this 

 proportion increases in the middle stages \ and as we rise 

 to the uppermost deposits, it is often difficult to draw any 

 specific distinction between the fossils they contain and 

 the plants and animals that now flourish on their super- 

 ficial areas. In. the earliest stages the fauna of Europe was 

 characterised by its palreotheres, anoplotheres, xiphodons, 

 river-hogs, alligators, crocodiles, gavials, and turtles ; in 

 the middle stages these decline or die out, and deinotheres, 

 mastodons, mammoths, camels, giraffes, cave-bears, lions, 

 and hyamas take their places ; while in the upper stages 



