No. 594] 



NOTES AND LITERATURE 



:>3 



eastern Connecticut and the other at the eastern end of Long 

 Island, yet it is known that other people have left New York and 

 gotten to these two places without crossing the eastern end of the 

 Sound and, furthermore (to make the comparison more accurate), 

 we must put in as a part of the argument that no one was ever 

 actually known to cross directly from eastern Connecticut to 

 Long Island or vice versa. In the face of such evidence he would 

 be rash indeed who would hold to the first theory as to our move- 

 ments after we left Broadway. 



Now I know very little about geology and still less about fossil 

 mammals, but I am willing to take on faith the conclusions of 

 well-accredited students of these subjects if the conclusions seem 

 to have been reached by logical deduction from reasonable prem- 

 ises and if the assertions of fact are not too widely different from 

 my recollection of the assertions of fact made by students who 

 have reached other conclusions from what seem to me to be un- 

 reasonable premises. It would be out of place here to give the 

 details of Matthew's analysis of vertebrate, especially mam- 

 malian, paleontology. He takes up group after group and out- 

 lines their fossil record showing that they 



accord fully and in detail with the principles 5 here set forth, and to be 

 impossible of explanation except upon the theory of permanence of the 

 ocean basins during the Cenozoic era. While the prominence of the 

 Holarctic region as a center of dispersal is ascribed to its central posi- 

 tion and the greater area, some evidence is given to show that climate 

 is also a factor in the greater progressiveness of the northern, since it 

 is also noticeable in the southern as compared with tropical fauna?. 



The distribution of the Reptilia appears to be in conformity with the 

 principles here outlined, and extends their application to the Mesozoic 

 era. The distribution of birds and fishes and of invertebrates and 

 plants is probably in accord with the same general principles, modified 

 by differences in methods of dispersal. The opposing conclusions that 

 have been drawn from the distribution of these groups are believed to 

 be due to an incorrect interpretation of the evidence. A few instances, 

 which have been prominently used to support opposing conclusions, 

 are analyzed and shown to conform to the conclusions above set forth, 

 if interpreted upon similar lines as the data for mammalian distribution. 



As an example of the widely divergent conclusions which may 

 be drawn from the same data concerning present-day distribution 



of -warm, humid, uniform climates, Associated with cycles of moderate 

 elevation and submergence, respectively, of continents; the cyclic develop- 

 ed Pr0greS5;ive g rou P s of a nim als in the great northern land mass 



