OP CREATION. 



347 



The continental area formerly, it would seem, con- 

 necting the island of New Guinea with parts of Aus- 

 tralia, and reaching to about 10 N. lat., seems to have 

 sunk down, contemporaneously with the elevation of 

 land in the north temperate zone; and the movement 

 of depression in this case, and of elevation in the other, 

 is most probably not yet completed. During the 

 changes thus going on, it is not easy to conjecture 

 at what rate other and corresponding changes may 

 have affected the organic world, but one series of facts 

 seems distinctly made out, and forms the groundwork 

 on which these conclusions are based. I mean the 

 former distribution of the larger land animals in 

 groups not very dissimilar to those now existing over 

 certain districts, and analogous to those at present 

 connected by broad physical characters. This ar- 

 rangement of the groups corresponds also remark- 

 ably, and in a most interesting manner, with the dif- 

 ferences observable between the generic forms which 

 were then common and those that are now met with. 

 It agrees in the singular fact, that many of the groups 

 of species formerly represented by gigantic types 

 were not confined to one district, but extended over 

 all the known land of the eastern hemisphere. It 

 agrees also with the arrangement of nearly allied spe- 

 cies at the present day, many of these being indi- 

 genous in distant and unconnected spots now, and 

 having been so formerly. And, lastly, it proves that 

 there is as little evidence to be derived from this 

 branch of geological investigation, as there is from re- 

 cent zoology and botany, in favour of any view of local 

 or secular development of new typical forms of or- 

 ganic existence ; since these modifications are rather 



