578 PALEONTOLOGY 



but the connecting form is still undiscovered; man himself is not far 

 from the various types of anthropoid apes, 1 but his actual connecting 

 relationship is unknown. 



We are no longer content, however, with these approaches to actual 

 contact and genetic kinship, we have toiled so long both by dis- 

 covery and by the elimination of one error after another, and are 

 so near the promised land, we can hardly restrain our impatience. 

 I venture to predict that the contact of the amphibia with the 

 fishes will be found either in America or Europe. No such prediction 

 could safely be made regarding the connecting form between the 

 amphibians and reptiles, because America, Eurasia, and Africa all 

 show in contemporaneous deposits evidence that such connection 

 may be discovered at any time. The transformation from reptiles 

 to birds will probably be found in the Permian of America or 

 Eurasia; chances of connecting the mammals with the reptiles 

 are decidedly brightest in South Africa; while in Europe, or more 

 probably in Asia, we shall connect man with generalized catarhine 

 primates. 



Passing from these larger questions of the relations of the great 

 classes of vertebrates to each other, let us review the problems arising 

 in the individual evolution of the classes themselves. 



Geographical Problems 



The primordial, solid-skulled, or stegocephalian amphibia of the 

 Permian diverged into a great variety of forms which wandered over 

 Eurasia and North America so freely that, for example, we find as 

 close a resemblance between certain Wiirtemberg and New Mexican 

 genera (Metopias) as between the existing stag of Europe and the 

 wapiti deer. Which branch of these primordial amphibians gave 

 rise to the modern frogs and salamanders we do not know. This 

 and hundreds of similar facts suggest the vital importance of paleo- 

 geography. 



As regards paleogeography, the great induction can be made that, 

 throughout the whole period of vertebrate evolution, and until com- 

 paratively recent times, Europe, Asia, and North America consti- 

 tuted one continent and one life-region, or Arctogaa (Huxley, 1868, 

 Blanford, 1890), with which the continents of the southern hemi- 



Allies.T Annals of the South African Museum, Records of the Albany Museum 

 (Cape Colony), Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (especially 1901), 

 vol. n, pp. 162-190, 1904; vol. I, pp. 490-498. 



1 See the immense literature on Pithecanthropus erectus, Dubois. Especially: 

 E. Haeckel, The Last Link, Our Present Knowledge of the Descent of Man, Lon- 

 don, 1898, 156 pp.; On Our Present Knowledge of the Origin of Man, Annual 

 Report, Smithsonian Institute, 1898, pp. 461-480; Anthropogenie, 2 vols. Leipzig, 

 1903,jpp. 992. 



A. H. Keane, Man, Past and Present, Cambridge University Press, xv, 1899, 

 548 pp.; Ethnology, University Press, 1900. 



