132 
The Australasian Scientific Magazine, [Nov, i, 1885. 
Connecting Links. 
By Heykim Nabi Cosmos. 
The connecting link, as generally called, between races, etc., is only 
arbitrary, as made by Zoologists. — What is considered a link by one, in 
one way, is not so in another. Links exist variously by analogy of organs, 
or similarity of certain parts, such as lungs, heart, blood, features, feathers, 
scales, and habits, etc., whilst in other parts there is the greatest dissimi- 
larity. 
Agassiz, as a zoologist, and simply on zoological grounds, assumed 
that there are several zones between the Ganges and the Atlantic Ocean, 
each having its own flora and fauna, and inhabited by races of men, the 
same in kind, but of different origin : when told by philologists that it is 
impossible, because the language spoken through that wide region demon- 
strated that all the inhabitants had a common descent, he answered, that 
“ as ducks quack everywhere, he could not see why men should not every- 
where speak or have an affinity of the same language.” 
Why the connecting links have not in certain cases been found, is, be- 
cause the world has not been sufficiently searched, 
However, in future ages, we may yet find the links in the hills of the 
ocean, when the sea again gives up her bed, and takes possession of our 
now fertile land, as she has done of yore. 
Earthquakes and the majestic power of the ocean have swallowed up 
millions of people, yet no one has ever yet found the bones of man in the 
bowels of the earth or sea, for the simple fact that the strata has not been 
sufficiently searched. It is only for a fortunate combination of circum- 
stances that any particular deposit could give us a fair conception of what 
life was that existed upon the earth when that deposit was formed. 
The time will, however, come before long when it shall be thought 
“ wonderful that naturalists, who were so well acquainted with the com- 
parative structure and development of man and other animals, should 
have believed each to have been a separate act of creation,” or, that no 
links have ever united man and inferior animals. A sudden transition, 
without a connecting link in the great animal chain, from irrational to 
rational creatures, is a distinct phenomenon from that passage from a 
simple to a more perfect animal organization and instinct. To pretend 
that such a step, or rather leap, can be a part of a regular series of changes 
in the animal w'orld is to strain analogy beyond all reasonable bounds. 
Individuals belonging to one species, separate, and living in different 
climates, influenced by food, etc., gradually change their form, appearance, 
and constitution, etc., and at length cannot be known as belonging to 
original species. 
It appears plain to us that there has been a constant oscillation 
in numbers of species in each genus in the tertiary as compared 
with the modern epoch. The continual progress that is slowly but surely 
going on shows an increasing similarity of living fauna — and amongst 
vertebrates especially— in their increasing resemblance to man from the 
first appearance of the primary palaeozoic fishes. 
