VII 
CREATION BY LAW 
165 
the Eocene Anoplotherium and Paleotherium, which are also 
generalised or ancestral types of the tapir and rhinoceros. 
The recent researches of M. Gaudry in Greece have furnished 
much new evidence of the same character. In the Miocene 
(or Pliocene) beds of Pikermi he has discovered the group of 
the Simocyonidse intermediate between bears and wolves ; the 
genus Hysenictis which connects the hysenas with the civets ; 
the Ancylotherium, which is allied both to the extinct mas- 
todon and to the living pangolin or scaly ant-eater ; and 
the Helladotherium, which connects the now isolated giraffe 
with the deer and antelops. 
Between reptiles and fishes an intermediate type has been 
found in the Archegosaurus of the Coal formation ; while the 
Labyrinthodon of the Trias combined characters of the 
Batrachia with those of crocodiles, lizards, and ganoid fishes. 
Even birds, the most apparently isolated of all liying forms, 
and the most rarely preserved in a fossil state, have been 
shown to possess undoubted affinities with reptiles ; and in 
the Oolitic Archaeopteryx, with its lengthened tail, feathered 
on each side, we have one of the connecting links from the 
side of birds ; while Professor Huxley has recently shown 
that the entire order of Dinosaurians have remarkable affinities 
to birds, and that one of them, the Compsognathus, makes a 
nearer approach to bird organisation than does Archaeopteryx 
to that of reptiles. 
Analogous facts to these occur in other classes of animals, 
as an example of which we have the authority of a distin- 
guished paleontologist, M. Barande, quoted by Mr. Darwin, for 
the statement that although the Palaeozoic Invertebrata can 
certainly be classed under existing groups, yet at this ancient 
period the groups were not so distinctly separated from each 
other as they are now; while Mr. Scudder tells us that 
some of the fossil insects discovered in the Coal formation 
of America offer characters intermediate between those of 
existing orders. Agassiz, again, insists strongly that the 
more ancient animals resemble the embryonic forms of 
existing species ; but as the embryos of distinct groups are 
known to resemble each other more than the adult animals 
(and in fact to be undistinguishable at a very early age), this 
is the same as saying that the ancient animals are exactly 
