TERTIARY FOSSILS. 93 



universally classed with some of the forms of that 

 order, these being the only suite of creatures 

 which my ideas of development would lead me to 

 expect at this place. Here I must meet the re- 

 viewer on a special ground. He admits the 

 dinosaurs to have been the nearest approach to 

 mammals ; but " they died away," he says, (" if 

 we are to trust to geology,) ages before the end of 

 the chalk." These mammals have, therefore, " no 

 zoological base to rest upon." That is, there is 

 no connexion between them and any such ani- 

 mals as the dinosaurs, because there is an interval 

 in the cretaceous formation which gives neither 

 these forms nor any intennediate. Now, the fact 

 is admitted by Professor Ansted, that the cre- 

 taceous system appears to have been " formed, 

 for the most part, by deposits in deep water, and 

 a considerable portion of it not far from the zero of 

 animal life.''''* And this he states with a particular re- 

 ference to the results of Professor Edwai'd Forbes's 

 researches in the Egean sea. We therefore have a 

 satisfactory explanation of the non-appearance of 

 forms intermediate to the reptiles and mammals 

 in the chalk, without being driven to suppose, 

 with our reviewer, that the latter were a creation 

 * Ansted's Geology, I. 502. 



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