XI PALAEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION 385 



might accumulate over the sinking land. Let 

 upheaval of the whole now take place, in such a 

 manner as to bring the emerging land into con- 

 tinuity with the South- American or Australian 

 continent, and, in course of time, it would be 

 peopled by an extension of the fauna of one of 

 these two regions just as I imagine the European 

 Permian dry land to have been peopled. 



I see nothing whatever against the supposition 

 that distributional provinces of terrestrial life 

 existed in the Devonian epoch, inasmuch as M. 

 Barrande has proved that they existed much 

 earlier. I am aware of no reason for doubting 

 that, as regards the grades of terrestrial life 

 contained in them, one of these may have been 

 related to another as New Zealand is to Australia, 

 or as Australia is to India, at the present day. 

 Analogy seems to me to be rather in favour of, 

 than against, the supposition that while only 

 Ganoid fishes inhabited the fresh waters of our 

 Devonian land, Amphibia and Reptilia, or even 

 higher forms, may have existed, though we have 

 not yet found them. The earliest Carboniferous 

 Amphibia now known, such as Anthracosaurus, 

 are so highly specialised that I can by no means 

 conceive that they have been developed out of 

 piscine forms in the interval between the Devonian 

 and the Carboniferous periods, considerable as that 

 is. And I take refuge in one of two alternatives : 

 either they existed in our own area during the 

 Devonian epoch and we have simply not yet found 



211 



