544 GEOGRAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. [part iv. 



uniformity of organisation. One family, which continued to 

 exist in Europe till the latter part of the Miocene period, 

 reached America, and has there been preserved to our day. 



Lines of Migration of the Mammalia. — The whole series of 

 phenomena presented by the distribution of the Mammalia, 

 looked at broadly, are in harmony with the view that the great 

 continents and oceans of our own epoch have been in existence, 

 with comparatively small changes, during all Tertiary times. 

 Each one of them has, no doubt, undergone considerable modifi- 

 cations in its area, its altitude, and in its connection with other 

 lands. Yet some considerable portion of each continent has, 

 probably, long existed in its present position, while the great 

 oceans seem to have occupied the same depressions of the 

 earth's crust (varied, perhaps, by local elevations and sub- 

 sidences) during all this vast period of time. Hence, allowing 

 for the changes of which we have more or less satisfactory 

 evidence, the migrations of the chief mammalian types can be 

 pretty clearly traced. Some, owing to their small size and 

 great vitality, have spread to almost all the chief land masses ; 

 but the majority of the orders have a more restricted range. 

 All the evidence at our command points to the Northern 

 Hemisphere as the birth-place of the class, and probably of all 

 the orders. At a very early period the land communication 

 with Australia was cut off, and has never been renewed ; so 

 that we have here preserved for us a sample of one or more 

 of the most ancient forms of mammal. Somewhat later the 

 union with South America and South Africa was severed; 

 and in both these countries we have samples of a somew T hat 

 more advanced stage of mammalian development. Later still, 

 the union by a northern route between the Eastern and Western 

 Hemispheres appears to have been broken, partly by a physical 

 separation, but almost as effectually by a lowering of tempera- 

 ture. About the same period the separation of the Paleearctic 

 region from the Oriental was effected, by the rise of the 

 Himalayas and the increasing contrast of climate; while the 

 formation of the great desert-belts of the Sahara, Arabia, 

 Persia, and Central Asia, helped to complete the separation of 



