TERTIARY FAUNA. 



241 



ber of Carnivora, resembling the Viverrida (polecats, 

 martens, &c.) and hyenas, and as viverridse exist in Af- 

 rica as well as in Asia, and as, moreover, the musk 

 ruminants represented in this primitive fauna are now 

 likewise Asiatic and African, and, finally, as the French 

 opossums of those ages still live in Central and South 

 America, ' we gain an impression that the most 

 ancient Tertiary fauna of Europe is the source of a 

 truly continental animal society now represented in the 

 tropical zone of both worlds, but most emphatically in 

 Africa." 



Far more heterogeneous is the picture of the higher 

 animal life of the middle and more recent Tertiary 

 periods which we reconstruct from the numerous and in 

 parts highly prolific repositories of these remains. To 

 draw narrower limits within these periods is impractica- 

 ble; from place to place, from stratum to stratum, there 

 is coherence ; nowhere does a species appear that .might 

 not be derived from another ; and our authority says that 

 anatomy, morphology, palaeontology, and geographical 

 distribution, seemed to impress no doctrine upon him 

 with such energy and pertinacity as that separate species 

 of a genus, species without any historical and therefore 

 without any previous local link to any original stock, 

 do not exist. The most celebrated repository of Ter- 

 tiary mammals is Pikermi, a short distance from Athens, 

 an accumulation of skeletons complete and in fragments, 

 which pre-supposes a profusion of animals, of which at 

 any rate the most densely inhabited regions of Africa 

 may, according to Livingstone's descriptions, give us 

 an idea. 



Again the Carnivora give way to the Graminivora, 



