OHAPTEE XI 



ALBERT GAUDRY. LES ENCHAlNEMENTS DU MONDE 

 ANIMAL 



The concatenations of the animal kingdom and Philosophical Palaeont- 

 ology The progress of the animated world The stages of evolu- 

 tion The methods of functional adaptations Artificial con- 

 catenations 



AT about the time that Edward Cope, still a very 

 young man, was beginning the publication of his 

 admirable researches on palaeontology and the 

 evolution of vertebrates, a French palaeontologist, 

 Albert Gaudry, was pursuing the same studies. 

 At that time, that is, about the middle of 

 the nineteenth century, the whole school of French 

 naturalists, with but few exceptions, was im- 

 bued with the Cuverian theories on the fixity 

 of species, and more or less openly repudiated 

 the descent hypothesis. The merit of Gaudry 

 was to be one of the first, in our country at 

 least,* to adopt the transformist theory, and 

 to endeavour to apply it to the study of fossil 

 mammals. In his first work, on the fauna of the 

 Miocene Vertebrates of Attica (1867), Gaudry en- 

 deavoured to show that the genera of the Mammals 

 were not so clearly separated as was at that time 

 supposed, and that certain new types of the fauna 



* France is, of course, here meant. ED. 

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