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lan race. 

 iii(al)& 

 ♦^ virions 



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 at a 



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r-T7 



III.] THE DOCTEINE OP ' SPECIFIC CENTEES.' 



331 



111 1/ 



1 



common 



55, respecting ' natural barriers ' which has since been 

 so jDopular, would be wholly without meaning had not the 

 geographical distribution of organic beings led naturalists 

 to adopt very generally the doctrine of specific centres, or, in 

 other words, to believe that each species, whether of plant or 

 animal, originated in a single birthplace. Eeject this view, 

 and the fact that not a single native ( 

 to Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, and South America, 

 can in no ways be explained by adverting to the wide extent 

 of intervening ocean, or to the sterile deserts, or the great 

 heat or cold of the climates, through which each species 

 must have passed, before it could migrate from one of those 

 distant regions to another. It might fairly be asked of 

 one who talked of impassable barriers, why the same kan- 

 garoos, rhinoceroses, or lamas, should not have been created 

 simultaneously in Australia, Africa, and South America? 

 The horse, the ox, and the dog, although foreign to these 

 countries until introduced 



themselves there in a wild state ; and we can scarcely doubt 

 that many of the quadrupeds at present peculiar to Australia, 

 Africa, and South 



manner to inhabit all the three continents, had they been in- 

 digenous in each, or could they once have got a footing there 

 as new colonists. 



We have seen in the passage already cited that Buffon 

 called attention to the fact that the apes and baboons of the 



man 



Ame 



to 



continued in like 



World were nowhere to be found in America 



quadruman 



N'ow 



hght in both continents, the want of agreement in the ana- 

 tomical and many other characters of the two groups has 



more 



■World apes and m 



I 



liiiii because tliey have a narrow division between the nos- 



"PI 1 CI m 4-l-» ^ ^ ^ ^ (^ IT -»-T- -^- _ _ 



World 



their 



trils ; those of the 



nostrils are widely separated. In the Catarrhine division 

 the number of teeth, not only in the Orangs and Gibbons 

 which approach nearest to the human race in form and 

 structure, but in all the other quadrumana with the exception 

 o± one or two aberrant groups such as the Lemurs, are 32, as 



