334 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTEIBUTION OP SPECIES. [Ch. XXXVIII. 



f 



m 



them of Miocene 



World forms 



Semnop 



Mr. Darwin have dwelt em 



on this manifest relationship between the living and the dead 

 between peculiar genera and families of mammalia now in- 

 habiting certain parts of the world and the fossil representa- 

 tives of the same families fonnd in corresponding regions.* 



No 



be satisfactory unless it renders some account of the two 

 classes of phenomena already alluded to in this chapter. 

 Firsts species^ and often genera and still larger groups^ have 

 such a range in space as implies that they have spread in all 

 directions from a limited area called a ^ centre of creation ' 

 until their progress was stopped by some natural barriers, 

 or conditions in the organic and inorganic world, hostile to 

 their farther extension. Secondly, the restriction of peculiar 

 generic forms to certain parts of the globe is not confined to 

 the present period, but may be traced back to an antecedent 

 geological epoch, when most of the species of mammalia were 

 different from those now living. The significance of this last- 

 mentioned fact can hardly be overrated. If we find Latin 



inscriptions of ancient date most 



in the country 



where Italian is now spoken, Greek inscriptions most abundant 

 where they now talk modern Greek, and Egyptian hierogly- 



monum 



after the Christian era the kindred Coptic tongue was still in 

 use, we recognise at once that there is a geographical con- 

 nection between the three dead and the 



three living or 

 intervening 



modern languages, which even if the entire 

 history of those countries were lost, could not be questioned. 

 In this case it would afford a powerful argument in favour of 

 the derivative origin of the three modern languages, each of 



a nearer relationship to the extinct tongues 



them havinp 



than to any other lost forms of speech known to us by tradition 

 or history as having been used elsewhere on the globe. So the 



* Owen, Eritish Mammals and Eirds; and Darwin, Journal of South xVmorica. 





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