Chai\ X. THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. 323 



America, in equatorial South America, in Tierra del 

 Fuego, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in the peninsula 

 of India. For at these distant points, the organic re- 

 mains in certain beds present an unmistakeable degree 

 of resemblance to those of the Chalk. It is not that 

 the same species are met with ; for in some cases not 

 one species is identically the same, but they belong to 

 the same families, genera, and sections of genera, and 

 sometimes are similarly characterised in such trifling 

 points as mere superficial sculpture. Moreover other 

 forms, which are not found in the Chalk of Europe, but 

 which occur in the formations either above or below, are 

 similarly absent at these distant points of the world. In 

 the several successive palaeozoic formations of Russia, 

 Western Europe and North America, a similar parallel- 

 ism in the forms of life has been observed by several 

 authors : so it is, according to Lyell, with the several 

 European and North American tertiary deposits. Even 

 if the few fossil species which are common to the Old 

 and New Worlds be kept wholly out of view, the general 

 parallelism in the successive forms of life, in the stages 

 of the widely separated palaeozoic and tertiary periods, 

 would still be manifest, and the several formations 

 could be easily correlated. 



These observations, however, relate to the marine in- 

 habitants of distant parts of the world : we have not 

 sufficient data to judge whether the productions of the 

 land and of fresh water change at distant points in the 

 same parallel manner. We may doubt whether they 

 have thus changed : if the Megatherium, Mylodon, 

 Macrauchenia, and Toxodon had been brought to Europe 

 from La Plata, without any information in regard to 

 their geological position, no one would have suspected 

 that they had coexisted with still living sea-shells ; but 

 as these anomalous monsters coexisted with the Masto- 



