BIRDS WITH TEETH. 63 



came into existence, we can understand that the 

 ancestral creatures whence birds are descended pre- 

 sented many features in which they were not only 

 unlike the birds of our time, but unlike any other race 

 of existing animals. Were they not also, in all pro- 

 bability, very unlike each other ? Probably there 

 were much wider differences among the various orders 

 of animals which included all the ancestry of the 

 modern bird at the time when first any of the 

 characteristics now regarded as avian first existed, 

 than there are now among all the orders of existing 

 birds. This certainly appears from the evidence 

 obtained, not only respecting toothed birds, but also 

 respecting those bird-like animals of which Huxley 

 and others have shown that they were closely akin to 

 reptiles were, in fact, biped reptiles. We believe 

 that the same holds with every species now existing, 

 even with man that, for instance, if we could have 

 brought before us in rapid review all those creatures 

 from which the human race of our time has descended 

 (taking only those which belonged to one particular 

 epoch, before man, specialised as we now find him, 

 existed), we should not only find a far wider range of 

 difference among these creatures than among the 

 human races of the present day, but a wider range of 

 difference than even exists between men and apes. 

 There are a priori reasons for this view as regards the 

 human race; but, apart from these, the evidence 

 collected by Mivart in his work, " Men and Apes/' 

 while not, we think, available to show that there is no 



