DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS IN AMERICA. 



245 



road. Even a species of antelope and two other horned 

 ruminants (Leptotherium) found their way to Brazil. Two 

 sorts of tapir, of which the dentition, even in Cuvier's 

 eyes, is scarcely distinguishable from the Indian species; 

 two species of pigs, still bearing in their milk-teeth un- 

 mistakable characters of their aboriginal form; and a 

 number of deer, besides the lamas, a later and originally 

 American offshoot of the Eocene Anoplotheria — are one 

 and all living remnants of this ancient colony from the 

 East, which did not reach its dwelling-place without 

 copious losses on its long pilgrimage. It can scarcely 

 be doubted that many of the beasts of prey which in the 

 Diluvium of South America retained their family charac- 

 ter more than they do now, must have arrived there in 

 the same manner. Let us now remember that even the 

 Eocene Csenopithecus of Egerkingen distinctly pointed 

 to the present apes of America, and that the Didelphidas 

 (Opossums) lie buried in the same European soils. It 

 might almost appear that it was pre-eminently the di- 

 vision of arboreal quadrumana which, with the opos- 

 sums, domesticated itself in the vast forest^ of their new 

 abode, and, receiving a fresh impulse, gave rise to a 

 multitude of special forms, without however having, even 

 in the present times, reached the pitch of development 

 attained by their cousins who had remained behind in the 

 Old World. 



" We may now appropriately return to our previous 

 remark that this migration of animals did not find the 

 south of the New World destitute of mammals, but rather 

 already occupied by the toothless representatives of ant- 

 arctic, or at least of southern animal life. The diluvial 

 fauna of South America collected by Lund, Castlenau, 



