TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 



of forms was so strongly marked, that the great 

 palaeontologist, M. Gaudry, became a convert 

 to Mr. Darwin's theory in the course of the 

 search.^ Referring for many more such exam- 

 ples to the last edition of Sir Charles Lyell's 

 " Principles of Geology," let me further observe 

 that there has as yet been but little search for 

 fossils save in Europe and North America, and 

 even these areas have by no means been thor- 

 oughly explored. Concerning South America 

 much less is known, and the greater portions 

 of Asia, Africa, and Australia are just so much 

 terra incognita to the palaeontologist. As M. 

 Gaudry observes, a few strokes of the pickaxe 

 at the foot of Mount Pentelikos have revealed 

 to us the closest connecting links between forms 



^ We may also profitably consider the toxodon, found by 

 Mr. Darwin in South America, which is ** one of the stran- 

 gest animals ever discovered. In size it equalled an elephant or 

 megatherium, but the structure of its teeth, as Mr. Owen 

 states, proves indisputably that it was intimately related to the 

 Gnawers, the order which at the present day includes most of 

 the smallest quadrupeds : in many details it is allied to the 

 pachydermata : judging from the position of its eyes, ears, and 

 nostrils, it was probably aquatic, like the dugong and manatee, 

 to which it is also allied. How wonderfully," says Mr. 

 Darwin, " are the different orders, at the present time so well 

 separated, blended together in different points of the structure 

 of the toxodon ! " Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, p. 82. 

 Compare the remarks on the quaternary fauna of Western 

 Europe in Sir John Lubbock's Prehistoric Times , zd edition, 

 pp. 296-298. 



59 



