210 THfc STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN. 



the singular fact that they not only did not improve 

 throughout the vast Mesozoic time, but that they have 

 been in the progress of subsequent geological ages 

 expelled out of the great eastern continent, and, with 

 the exception of the American opossums, banished, 

 like convicts, to Australia. Yet, notwithstanding their 

 multiplied travels and long experiences, they have 

 made little advance. It thus seems that the Mesozoic 

 mammals were, from the evolutionist point of view, a 

 decided failure, and the work of introducing mammals 

 had to be done over again in the Tertiary ; and then, 

 as we shall find, in a very different way. If nothing 

 more, however, the Mesozoic mammals were a mute 

 prophecy of a better time, a protest that the age of 

 reptiles was an imperfect age, and that better things 

 were in store for the world. Moses seems to have 

 been more hopeful of them than Owen or even Huxley 

 would have been. He says that God " created " the 

 great Tanninim, the Dinosaurs and their allies, but 

 only " made " the mammals of the following creative 

 day ; so that when Microlestes and his companions 

 quietly and unnoticed presented themselves in the 

 Mesozoic, they would appear in some way to have 

 obviated, in the case of the tertiary mammals, the 

 necessity of a repetition of the greater intervention 

 implied in the word " create." How that was effected 

 none of us know ; but, perhaps, we may know here- 

 after. 



