322 Revieics — R. Li/dekker^s Catalogue of Fossil Mammaiia. 



modifying the old land-surfaces and marine areas of our globe, by 

 those gradual processes of elevation and subsidence, of denudation 

 and deposition, such as we may observe to be taking place to-day. 

 This law of Continuity in the physical events and changes on our 

 globe, as demonstrated by Lyell, was with equal force and accuracy 

 applied by our other great teacher, Charles Darwin, to the history 

 of organic life upon the earth. Thus, instead of a series of 

 separate creations and destructions of life, as taught by the 

 earlier geologists, we have been led by the wider views of Forbes, 

 Darwin, Wallace, and other naturalists, to recognize the great and 

 fundamental fact, that there never has been a period of total ex- 

 tinction of life since its first daw^n on our planet, and that the forms 

 w^hich we see around us are all derived by descent with modification 

 from others more or less ancient, which existed ages before man's 

 advent. 



Thus, instead of a broken and disjointed history, our earth, 

 whether viewed in its physical or biological aspect, presents a con- 

 tinuity of existence, which adds new interest to the study of its 

 geological formations and its palaeontological relics, since we are 

 ever in search now ,of evidence of ancestral forms which may prove 

 more or less closely related to those w^hich we see actually living at 

 the present day. 



The publication of Part I. of Mr. Lydekker's Catalogue of the 

 Fossil Mammalia in the British Museum (Natural History) forms 

 the first instalment of a most valuable work prepared under what 

 may very well be described as the new regime, in which every 

 fossil form has been carefully compared Avith its allied existing 

 species, and, wherever possible, referred to its living representative. 

 By adopting this more sound and philosophical method, most im- 

 portant and valuable points, having reference to the first appearance 

 in time, and also the former geographical limits of existing species, 

 are brought out in a most interesting and instructive manner, and 

 the former connection of old land-surfaces, now severed, is attested. 



The Catalogue commences with the order Primates, sub-order 

 Anthropoidea. Under this division we have evidence of eight 

 genera and eleven species of Monkeys ; two only of which, from 

 Brazil, are identified with existing species. They include the 

 celebrated tooth of Macacus pliocenus described by Sir Richard 

 Owen^ from the Pleistocene Brickearth of Grays, Essex. The 

 others are European or Indian forms. The Lemurs, now confined 

 to Madagascar, are represented in the Collection by three Eocene 

 species from France and S. Europe. 



The fossil Bats (Cheiroptera) form a very limited group in the 

 Collection. That found in England being the "horse-shoe Bat" 

 [Bhinolophus ferrum-equinum), and four other species from France 

 and Germany. Of the Insectivora nine species are recorded fossil, 

 including the common Mole, and two other species from France ; 

 and the " Desman," or Myogale from the Norfolk Forest Bed ; the 

 Shrew and the Hedgehog. The Carnivora occupy by far the 

 1 British Fossil Mammals, p. xlvi (1846). 



