SPECIAL CREATION OR DERIVATION? 



cations, the animals which now live in the same 

 area. Thus the fossil mammals of Australia are 

 chiefly marsupials, allied in structure to the 

 marsupials which now inhabit that continent ; 

 the extinct mammals of South America closely 

 resemble living sloths, armadillos, and ant-eaters. 

 " I was so much impressed with these facts," 

 says Mr. Darwin, " that I strongly insisted, in 

 1839 and 1845, on this wonderful relationship 

 in the same continent between the dead and the 

 living. Professor Owen has subsequently ex- 

 tended the same generalization to the mammals 

 of the Old World. We see the same law in this 

 author's restorations of the extinct and gigantic 

 birds of New Zealand. We see it also in the 

 birds of the caves of Brazil. Mr. Woodward 

 has shown that the same law holds good with 

 sea-shells. Other cases could be added, as the 

 relation between the extinct and living land- 

 shells of Madeira, and between the extinct and 

 living brackish-water shells of the Aralo-Caspian 

 Sea." 



It has indeed been urged, by upholders of 

 the special creation hypothesis, that these strik- 

 ing resemblances may be explained by suppos- 

 ing each species to have been created in strict 

 adaptation to the conditions of life surrounding 

 it. That is to say, God has continued to create 

 edentata in South America and marsupials in 

 Australia, because these two continents are best 

 405 



