92 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m 



be found, that is so much to the good of evolu- 

 tion ; although for reasons which I will lay before 

 you by and by, we must be cautious in our 

 estimate of the evidential cogency of facts of this 

 kind. 



It is a very remarkable circumstance that, from 

 the commencement of the serious study of fossil 

 remains, in fact, from the time when Cuvier 

 began his brilliant researches upon those found in 

 the quarries of Montmartre, paleontology has 

 shown what she was going to do in this matter, 

 and what kind of evidence it lay in her power to 

 produce. 



I said just now that, in the existing Fauna, the 

 group of pig-like animals and the group of rumi- 

 nants are entirely distinct ; but one of the first of 

 Cuvier's discoveries was an animal which he 

 called the Anoplotherium, and which proved to 

 be, in a great many important respects, inter- 

 mediate in character between the pigs, on the one 

 hand, and the ruminants on the other. Thus, 

 research into the history of the past did, to a 

 certain extent, tend to fill up the breach between 

 the group of ruminants and the group of pigs. 

 Another remarkable animal restored by the great 

 French palaeontologist, the Palceotkerium, similarly 

 tended to connect together animals to all appear- 

 ance so different as the rhinoceros, the horse, and 

 the tapir. Subsequent research has brought to 

 light multitudes of facts of the same order ; and, 



