EXISTING SPECIFIC FORMS ABUNDANT. 87 



and the vegetable soil. The animal remains found in these 

 generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that now pre- 

 vailing, or melting into it, there being included many 

 species which still exist. In a lacustrine deposit at Market- 

 Weighton, in the Vale of York, there have been found bones 

 of the elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer, 

 birds, all or nearly all presenting peculiarities different from 

 existing species, associated with thirteen species of land and 

 fresh- water shells, " exactly identical with types now living 

 in the vicinity." In similar deposits in North America, are 

 remains of the mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other 

 animals of extinct and living types. In short, these superfi- 

 cial deposits show precisely such remains as might be ex- 

 pected from a time at which the present forms of the animal 

 world had been generally assumed, but yet so far remote in 

 chronology as to allow of the dropping of many species, 

 through familiar causes perhaps we should only say the 

 obliteration of many peculiarities called specific in the in- 

 terval. Still, however, several of the most important living 

 species have left no record of themselves in any formation 

 beyond what are, comparatively speaking, modern. Such 

 are the sheep and goat, and such, above all, is our own 

 species. We thus learn that, compared with many humbler 

 animals, man is a being, as it were, of yesterday. 



