362 ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY. 



die of starvation and exposure, the inert, cold-blooded 

 ones, which can go long without food, will live perhaps for 

 weeks ; and so, out of the chances from time to time oc- 

 curring during long periods, reptiles will be the first to get 

 safely landed on foreign shores ; as indeed they are even 

 now known sometimes to be. The transport of mammalia 

 being comparatively precarious, must, in the order of prob- 

 ability, be longer postponed ; and would, indeed, be un- 

 likely to occur until by the enlargement of the new conti- 

 nent, the distances of its shores from adjacent lands had 

 been greatly diminished, or the formation of intervening 

 islands had increased the chances of survival. 



Assuming, however, that the facilities of immigration 

 had become adequate ; which would be the first mammals 

 to arrive and live ? Not large herbivores ; for they would 

 be soon drowned if by any accident carried out to sea. 

 Not the carnivora ; for these would lack appropriate food, 

 even if they outlived the voyage. Small quadrupeds fre- 

 quenting trees, and feeding on insects, would be those most 

 likely both to be drifted away from their native lands and 

 to find fit food in a new one. Insectivorous mammals, like 

 in size to those found in the Trias and the Stonesfield slate, 

 might naturally be looked for as the pioneers of the higher 

 vertebrata. And if we suppose the facihties of communi- 

 cation to be again increased, either by a further shallowing 

 of the intervening sea and a consequent multiplication of 

 islands, or by an actual junction of the new continent with 

 an old one, through continued upheavals ; we should finally 

 have an influx of the larger and more perfect mammals. 



Now rude as is this sketch of a process that would be 

 extremely elaborate and involved, and open as some of its 

 propositions are to criticisms which there /S no space here 

 to meet ; no one will deny that 'it represents something like 

 the biologic history of the supposed new continent. De 

 tails apart, it is manifest that simple organisms, able to 



