1880. ] The Critics of Evolution. 329 
heath in heather, grasses in prairies, bees in hives, herring in 
shoals, buffaloes in herds and men in nations.’ 
The present terrestrial fauna of Australia is acknowledged to 
be unique, and is it not essentially a remnant of the fauna of the 
Jurassic or even of an earlier age? “ There is a wonderful rela- 
tionship,” says Darwin, “in the same continent between the dead 
and the living.” On the hypothesis of evolution there is no diffi- 
culty in admitting that the differences between the Miocene forms 
of Mammalia and those which exist at present, are the results of 
gradual modification. “The hypothesis of evolution explains the 
facts of Miocene, Pliocene and recent distributions,” says Huxley, 
“and no other supposition even pretends to account for them.” 
The division of the Tertiary into Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene 
and Post-pliocene according to the preponderance in number of 
extinct or recent shells, evidently admits that many species have 
persisted through the changes that have destroyed others. 
The late T. A. Conrad, a pronounced opponent of evolution, 
asserts in his “ Descriptions of new Genera and Species of Fossil 
Shells of North Carolina,” that “ it is a generally received opinion 
that some species of Miocene shells escaped the destruction of 
the general fauna,” and that “the small amount of variation, and 
in some species none at all, seems to indicate that some few kinds 
of shells are now living which originated in the Miocene period.” 
“ Among these shells, the Oliva Zitterata (Lam.) lives in myriads 
in Tampa bay, whilst there is a Miocene Ova equally abundant 
in the bank of Cape Fear river, which offers no characters by 
which to distinguish it from that fossil species.” The same 
remark is made respecting the fossil Marginella limatula (Conrad), 
a species living on the coast of South Carolina, while he suspects 
identity of the fossil and the living may be shown to exist among 
many other species. 
In his paper on “The Relations of the Horizons of Extinct 
Vertebrata of Europe and North America,” Prof. E. D. Cope has 
shown that “ the characteristic of the Pliocene fauna in Europe is 
the fact that the species belong mostly to existing genera.” “In 
the Equus beds of Oregon, a few extinct genera in like manner 
share the field with various recent ones, while not a few of the 
l Essay on Classification. Contributions to Natural History of the United States. 
By L. Agassiz. Vol. 1 - 39. 
** Report of the s Geological apei of N. Carolina,” by W. C. Kerr. 1875. Ap- 
pendix A, P- 24. 
VOL. XIV,—NO, V. 2s 
