200 ANIMAL PEDIGREES 



Eocene. 



Cretaceous. 



The animals, and for that matter the plants too, 

 of the Miocene age, did not come into existence 

 irrespective of pre-existing animals and plants, but 

 were the direct lineal descendants of the Eocene 

 animals and plants ; and the forefathers of those of 

 Pliocene and Recent times. 



Kainozoic. 



Mesozoic. 



Palaeozoic. 



So also were the animals of Mesozoic times the 

 children of those of the Palaeozoic age, and the 

 parents of the Kainozoic fauna. And so this idea 

 of continuity of life from its earliest dawn on the 

 earth, through age after age, down to the present 

 time, forces itself upon us : an idea involving the 

 further conception of the evolution of existing 

 animals from unlike ancestors of former times : an 

 idea constraining us to admit that animals, like men, 

 have pedigrees, and that between the animals of all 

 ages a kinship, a blood relationship, exists. 



The recognition of this kinship is the determining 

 feature of the Natural History of to-day. The 

 reconstruction of these pedigrees is the great work 

 of the future : the rewriting of the past histories, 

 not merely of one or two groups for a limited 



