TERTIARY FAUNA. 24! 



ber of Carnivora, resembling the Viverrida (polecats, 

 martens, &c.) and hyenas, and as viverridae exist in 

 Africa as well as in Asia, and as, moreover, the musk 

 ruminants represented in this primitive fauna are 

 now likewise Asiatic and African, and, finally, as the 

 French opossums of those ages still live in Central and 

 South America, " we gain an impression that the most 

 ancient Tertiary fauna of Europe is the source of a 

 truly continental animal society now represented in the 

 tropical zone of both worlds, but most emphatically in 

 Africa." 



Far more heterogeneous is the picture of the higher 

 anima) life of the middle and more recent Tertiary 

 periods which we reconstruct from the numerous and in 

 parts highly prolific repositories of these remains. To 

 draw narrower limits within these periods is imprac- 

 ticable ; from place to place, from stratum to stratum, 

 there is coherence ; nowhere does a species appear that 

 might not be derived from another ; and our authority 

 says that anatomy, morphology, palaeontology, and geo- 

 graphical distribution, seemed to impress no doctrine 

 upon him with such energy and pertinacity as that 

 separate species of a genus, species without any historical 

 and therefore without any previous local link to any 

 original stock, do not exist." The most celebrated 

 repository of Tertiary mammals is Pikermi, a short 

 distance from Athens, an accumulation of skeletons 

 complete and in fragments, which pre-supposes a pro- 

 fusion of animals, of which at any rate the most densely 

 inhabited regions of Africa may, according to Living- 

 stone's descriptions, give us an idea. 



Again the Carnivora give way to the Graminivora, 



