J. D. Dana on American Geological History. 333 
. But here our boasting ceases, for, as Agassiz has shown, the 
present Fauna of America is more analogous to the later Ter- 
iary of Kurope than to the existing species of that continent. 
In the Paleozoic Ages, to the close of the Coal Period, the 
American continent was as brilliant and perhaps as profuse in its 
hfe as any other part of the world. It was a period, indeed, 
when the globe was in an important sense a unit, not individu- 
alized in its climates or its distribution of life, and only partially 
in its seas. But from this time the contrast is most striking. 
The whole number of known American species of animals of 
the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary Periods 
is about two thousand; while in Britain and Europe, a territo 
The supremacy of the great Oriental continent 1s, therefore, 
most signally apparent. 
The Ete still greater with Australia and New Zealand, 
Whose past and present Fauna and Flora have been well said by 
_ Agassiz and Owen to represent the Jurassic Period,—the pres- 
ent era affording Trigonias, Terebratul, Cestraciont Fishes, and 
the Araucarian Conifers, all Jurassic types, besides Kangaroos 
and Moas, Among Mammals, as is well known, the Marsupials, 
the lowest of all in the class, are its typical species. 
