76 THEORY OP THE EARTH. 



quadruped exactly the same with those of Europe, 

 Asia, and Africa. The puma, the jaguar, the ta- 

 pir, the capybara, the lama, or glama, and vicug- 

 na, and the whole tribe of sapajous, were to them 

 entirely new animals, of which they had not the 

 smallest idea. 



Similar circumstances have recurred in our 

 own time, when the coasts of New Holland and 

 the adjacent islands were first examined. The 

 species of the kangaroo, phascoloma, dasyurus, pera- 

 mela, phalanger, or flying opposum, with the hairy 

 and spinous duck-billed animals denominated or- 

 nithorinckus and echidna,* have astonished zoologists 

 by presenting new and strange conformations, con- 

 trary to all former rules, and incapable of being 

 reduced under any of the former systems, 



If there still remained any great continent to be 

 discovered, we might perhaps expect to be made 

 acquainted with new species of large quadrupeds ; 

 among which some might be found more or less 

 similar to those of which we find the exuviae in the 

 bowels of the earth. But it is merely sufficient to 

 glance the eye over the map of the world, and ob- 

 serve the innumerable directions in which naviga- 

 tors have traversed the ocean, in order to be satis- 



* These are new animals of Australasia, or New Holland, only re- 

 cently discovered, whose strange conformations, not analogous with 

 the animals of the old world, or of America, have required the adop- 

 tion of new generic terms by Cuvier and other naturalists. Trahsl. 



