248 



EXPLANATIONS 



ganic development till we reach the existing order of 

 things " The reader will further be able to juoge of the 

 candor of the reviewer respecting the zoology of the ter- 

 tiary, when he is reminded that it shows exactly those 

 new portions of the animal kingdom which might have 

 been expected, according to the theory of development. 

 Heretofore, we have only few and faint traces of mam- 

 malia ; but now they are added in abundance, mammalia 

 being the crowning class of the vertebrated form As far 

 as class, therefore, is concerned, it is incontestably a 

 " regular plan of organic development." But this is not 

 all. We haye seen the reptile forms of the secondary ap- 

 proaching the cetacean character ; and now there is an 

 abundance of the aquatic mammalia, as well as of those 

 land pachyderms which are universally classed with 

 some of the forms of that order, these being the only suite 

 of creatures which my ideas of development would lead 

 ne to expect at this place. Here I must meet the re- 

 newer on a special ground. He admits the dinosaurs tc 

 lave been the nearest approach to mammals ; but " they 

 lied away," he says (" if we are to trust to geology,) ages 

 jefore the end of the chalk." These mammals have, 

 herefore, "no zoological base to rest upon;" that is, 

 :here is no connection between them and any such animals 

 ■as the dinosaurs, because there is an interval in the creta- 

 ceous formation which gives neither these forms nor any 

 intermediate. Now the fact is admitted by Professor 

 Ansted, that the cretaceous system appears to have been 

 " formed, for the most part, by deposits in deep water, 

 and a considerable portion of it not far from the zero 

 if animal life."* And this lie states with a particular 

 reference to the results of Professor Edward Forbes's re- 

 searches in the Egean Sea. We therefore have a satis- 

 factory explanation of the non-appearance of forms inter- 

 mediate to the reptiles and mammals in the chalk, without 

 being driven to suppose, with our reviewer, that the latter 

 were a creation de novo of animal life. But no such fact 

 as this did it suit our reviewer to state. 



" Carnivora," he proceeds to say, " are as old as pachy- 

 derms. As far, at least, as we have any evidence bearing 

 on the question, and bimana (monkeys) are found in this 

 division — thus contradicting and stultifying the upper end 

 of our author's grand creative scale." There is here, in 

 * Ansted's Geology, i., 502. 



