EVOLUTIONARY EVIDENCES 261 



derivation : the gap between the arehosaiirian phylum and Archaeopteryx 

 is as wide as ever. But in the new classifications that have taken the 

 place of the older Eatitae and Carinata? we have, I am sure, approached 

 more nearly the real evolution of the birds than ever before. 



In the field of the mammals the investigators have been so many and 

 so able, the collections that have been made so enormous in amount, that 

 the subject were well worthy a separate place on this program. Indeed 

 I should feel lost in its discussion had not Doctor Gregory kindly come 

 to my aid; and perhaps the first comment that I can^-make is in his own 

 words, with which, so far as my knowledge goes, I quite agree : *^The chief 

 advance made in mammalian paleontology during the past decade lies 

 not so much in the discovery of new and strange faunae, or of long-sought 

 'missing links,' as in the steady development along familiar lines, espe- 

 cially in thorough morphological and systematic revision and in faunal 

 revision. Perhaps the greatest progress has been in faunal correlation, 

 due to systematic exploration by various museums, and to systematic 

 revision of the faunae. Along with this has progressed a reinterpretation 

 of familiar data, a wider understanding of the comparative anatomy of 

 recent mammals, and attempts to synthesize and summarize existing 

 knowledge of recent and fossil mammals." The names of all those to 

 whom this advancement is due are too numerous to mention here ; some 

 of the investigators, at least, are known to my hearers by their participa- 

 tion in the present symposium. 



First of all perhaps are the evolutionary evidences, ones that have 

 rightly claimed more attention from the scientific world than any others 

 in vertebrate paleontology during the last decade, furnished by the dis- 

 coveries of the Fayum of Africa — discoveries that have carried back the 

 history of the Proboscidea in that continent to the Oligocene, if not the 

 Eocene, paralleled only by those classic ones by Marsh in the history of 

 the horse. Xone the less interesting are the indissoluble bonds they have 

 disclosed between the Proboscidea and the Sirenia. These discoveries 

 also have thrown a bright light over both the Hyracoidea and the Cetacea. 

 Whether the Archaeoceti have l^een derived from the Creodonta, as Fraas 

 believes, or from the Insectivora, as ^latthew insists, is a minor problem 

 to that of the terj-estrial ancestry of the Cetacea. The discovery of true 

 anthropoid apes in the Oligocene of Africa by Schlosser is another im- 

 portant bit of evidence in man's ancestry. The recognition of the phylo- 

 genetic coherency of the Subungulata and of the Notungulata has been 

 an important advance in the taxonomy of the Mammalia. 



lyfuch has been added to our knowledge of the ancestry of the horse by 

 Gidley, of the phylogeny of the Cervidae and Camivora by Matthew, of 



