June 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



245 



name is certainly not to be found in the resemblance of the 

 constellation to the animal." * The Iroquois tradition, 

 however, accounts foi- its name in the following way : 

 "A party of hunters were once in pur.'^uit of a bear, when 

 they were attacked by a monster stone giant, and all but 

 three destroyed. The three, together with the beai', were 

 carried by invisible spirits up into the sky, where the bear 

 can still be seen, pursued by the first hunter with his bow, 

 the second who bears a kettle, and the third, who, farther 

 behind, is gathering sticks. Only in the fall do the arrows 

 of the hunter pieice the bear, when his dripping blood 

 tinges the autumn foliage. Then for a time he is invisible, 

 but afterwards reappears." f 



This same belief existed among the Algonquin Indians of 

 New England, and is related in a poem, of which the 

 following is a translation : 



We are the stars which sing, 

 We sing with our light ; 

 We are the birds of fire. 

 We Hy over the sky. 

 Our light is a voice ; 

 We make a road for spirits, 

 For the spirits to pass over. 

 Among us are three hunters 

 Who chase a bear ; 

 There never was a time 

 When they were not hunting, 

 We look down on the mountains. 

 This is the 8ong of the Stars. J 



DID BIRDS OR BEASTS COME FIRST? 



NOTE RESPECTING CERTAIN AFFIRMATIONS, ANCIENT 

 AND RECENT, CONCERNING THE QUESTION OF 

 MAMMALIiUSt JUNIORITY. 



By Oswald Daw.son. 



N the March issue of Knowledge, Mr. Edward 

 Clodd is printed as affirming that birds " cer- 

 tainly preceded mammals in the succession of 

 species." As it happens that the claims to 

 seniority of the air-population and laud-popu- 

 lation has been a topic of extreme interest 

 throughout England and elsewhere since the 

 publication of Mr. Gladstone's " Dawn of Creation and of 

 Wor.ship " in the Nineteenth Century of last November, and 

 since Prof. Huxley allowed Mr. Gladstone's statement that 

 the juniority of mammals was a "demonstrated conclu.sion 

 and established fact " to pass unchallenged, § I shall pre- 

 sume to question this alleged " certainty." 



When finding Prof. H. G. Seeley affirm that "geological 

 history does not carry us back appreciably towards the 

 origin of the great divisions of organic nature — there is 

 evolution, but it is only the evolution of genera and of 

 ordinal groups and not of classes " (pp. 451, .526, of " Manual 

 of Geology "), one is tempted to suppose that considerations 

 other than those derived from palreontology have prompted 

 Mr. Clodd's declaration. Yet what can such considerations 

 be ? No one imagines that the Monotreniata are indebted 

 for their ornithic or sauropsidan characters to inheritance 



* Flammarion, "Astronomical Myths," p. 61. [The resemblance, 

 however, is far stronger than can be recognised in the case of most 

 constellations, if it be sought in the right way. There is certainly 

 no long-tailed bear in the sky, but neither is therein nature. — R. P.] 



t "Bureau of Ethnology," 1880-81, p. 80. Smithsonian Institute. 



j Algonquin, " Legends of New England," p. 379. Leland. 



§ Unless his remark that " the question of the exact meaning of 

 ' higher ' and ' ordinary ' in the case of mammals opens up the 

 prospect of a hopeful logomachy " be capable of interpretation as a 

 challenge. 



from birds. Birds are not more highly organised than 

 Uiammals, thus favouring a presumption that their evolution 

 must have commenced earlier. More multitudinous in 

 specific forms than mammals birds may be, but did this 

 indicate a higher antiquity, its weight would speedily be 

 more than neutralised by a reference to the notorious homo- 

 geneity of the class Aves in comparison with the class 

 Mammalia, or, indeed, with the Uiujulata, e.g., alone. 



Mr. Clodd makes the singular remark that, " in the 

 absence of proof that " certain Triassic footprints "are due 

 to birds, which certainly preceded mammals in the succession 

 of species, a great link is missing in the Trias, since that 

 system has yielded teeth of the earliest known mammal." 

 Truly " a great link is missing," if what is sought be an 

 iota of warrant for the assumption that birds certainly pre- 

 ceded mammals; but otherwise no link, great or small, is 

 missing. Even were the (Jonnecticut prints proven to be 

 avian, the seniority of birds would only be established by 

 assuming that the beasts of the upper Trias exhibited to us 

 the dawn of mammalian life, and then the seniority would 

 be won by less than a period. But it is generally admitted 

 that the Monotremata are the nearest representatives of the 

 primordial ^/«;(t)?jrtZi«, justifying Professor Huxley's designa- 

 tion of Prototheria ; * whereas Microlestes ifec. are affiliated 

 to one or other of the Marsupial, or, it may be, Eutherian 

 groups. 



The post- Amphibian ancestors of the Mammalia are not 

 known. They are termed //2/^:»o</(eria. Though the Thurin- 

 gian lizard of the Permian occupies an exalted position in 

 Professor Haeckel's " Twenty-two Ancestral Stages of Man," 

 and though we have " theriodont " and otherwise therio- 

 morphic fossil reptiles, it nevertheless remains improbable 

 that any reptile has intruded into mammalian phylo- 

 geny. But even were the contrary view proven, a 

 post-Pala30zoic origin of mammals would by no means be 

 involved in the circumstance. I commend those who fancy 

 otherwise to Prof. Huxley's criticism of Prof. Haeckel's 

 " Ante-Triassic " &c. periods (" Critiques and Addresses," 

 pp. 310-312). The illustrious critic would "put the ex- 

 istence of the common stock " of reptiles " far back in the 

 Palaeozoic epoch;" and, having mentioned that "Mammalia 

 certainly " existed in the Triassic age, concludes with the 

 sound remark : "I should apply a similar argumentation to 

 all other groups of animals " besides reptiles. Prof. Flower, 

 too, finds it " reasonable to conclude " that Prototheria, 

 Mctatheria, " and 2}erhaps Eutheria " existed "far hack in 

 the Mesozoic aye " (" Osteology of the Mammalia," third 

 ed., p. 5). One of the latest authorities, or, at any rate, 

 authors, the late Prof. Oscar Schmidt, in his " Mammalia in 

 their relation to Primasval Times," gives us no clue as to 

 the relation of the Prototheria to primeval times. This 

 writer (on p. 2.53) states that " the vertebr.-e of whales have 

 even been found in the Jura." f Additional evidence could 

 be cited, were it needful, to justify a belief in the antiquity 

 of beasts. 



However, the Hypotheria were, almost certainly, pos- 

 sessed of two occipital condyles, in common with Avijjhibia 

 and Mammalia. And in any case, in order to establish 

 the certainty of priority of birds over beasts, we must 

 assume that the Prototheria were evolved from the Hypo- 

 theria, s.mA then gave rise to the marsupials (or insectivora?) 

 in the interval of time between the depositions of the lower 

 and upper Trias (again assuming that the Connecticut 



* I presume they would retain this title even should the 

 marsupials be proved to be not intermediate between them and the 

 Evtltcria. Cf. George J. Romanes in the Fortnightly Ilei-hic (p. 336, 

 footnote), March 1886. 



t I may here notice a curious misprint, which makes Mr. Clodd 

 affirm that " whales " are abundant in the Trias. 



