430 Scientific Intelligence. 
We have the most pregnant proof of the importance of Paleontology 
in rectifying and expanding ideas deduced from recent zoology of the 
geographical limits of particular forms of animals, by the results of its 
— to the proboscidian or — family. 
But such retrospective views of lite in remote periods, in many im- 
brian Smeal confirm the zoologist’s deducting of the pti | 
stricted range of particular forms of mammalian life. The sum of all 
the evidence from the fossil world in Australia, proves its’ axuninlial 
species, than now exis 
But ogy has revealed more important and unexpected facts se 
tive to the marsupial type of quadrupeds. In the miocene and eoce 
tertiary deposits, marsupial fossils of the American genus Didelphys 
have been found, both in ste and England; and they are t 
with Tapirs like that of America. In a more ancient geo logical period 
remains of marsupials, some Binaciteenieen as Spalacotherium and Tri- 
conodon, others with teeth like the peculiar premolars in the Australian 
genus Hypsipromnus, have been found in the upper oolite of the Isle of 
Purbeck. In the lower oolite at Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, marsupial re- 
mains have been found having their nearest ‘living representatives in oe 
Australian genera Myrmecobius and Dasyurus. Thus it would see 
that the deeper we penetrate the earth, or, in other words, the further we 
e in time, the more completely we are absolved from the t 
laws of geographical distribution. In comparing the mammalian fossils 
found in British pleistocene and pliocene beds, we have often to travel to 
Asia or Africa for their homologues. In the miocene and eocene 
representatives. To match the mammalian remains from the English 
oolitic formations, we must bring species from the Antipodes. These are 
truly most suggestive facts. If the ne stn laws of geographical ever 
tion depend, in an important degree, upon the present configuratio 
position of —. and islands, abet a total — in the geographi- 
eal character of the earth’s surface must have taken place since the 
“Stonesfield slate” was deposited in what now forms the county of Ox- 
fordshire! These and the like considerations from the modificatio cations of 
phi 
us how inadequate must the phenomena connected wit 
distribution of land fad sea to guide to the pre ae of the — 
portion of the globe so investi 
