The Geographical Distribution of Mammals

This is a r epr oduction of a libr ary book that was digitiz ed b y Google as part of an ongoing e ff ort to pr eserv e the inf orma tion in book s and mak e it univ ersally accessible . https: / / book s.google . com 3J n ■1 wSA ■ ■■■ ■ H ■E U ■■ ■ IP*™ «*..«. ' aDi ol &i f . v », : Dtj A Son. (Limited) Lill A MARSUP|AL. Autechinus mmutissimiis. B PLACENTAL. Mus.delicalulus in; -mhilmphioa], ins • i MA MM A !:s A NT) :.', ' 1 ' it! DAY AMl «•■ r.;, l.i. i i ! ■ ii. : \ - . \ ■- j■ ^m L. ' +&$ m V V 2■.. ■ S3 ■ THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION MAMMALS HY ANDREW MURRAY LONDON. DAY AND SON, LIMITED, LITHOGRAPHERS AND PUBLISHERS, GATE STREET, LINCOLN-S INN FIELDS. 1866. r ; UVVA I KXi-rJA. LONDON Stkangeways and Waldew, 2S Castle Street, Leicester Square. CONTENTS. CHAPTER Classification adopted in this volume, and Dates of Appearance of Families of PAtlE Mammals in Geological Time ......... i Introduction ............. 1 i. Preliminary Inquiries — Origin of Species — Specific Centres .... 4 II. Preliminary Inquiries continued — Modes of Dispersal of Species . . . 15 m. Geography of the Globe since the Secondary Epoch — Subsidence in Southern and Elevation in Northern Hemispheres — Coral Reefs — Bands of Elevation and Depression ............ 23 iv. Past Geography of the Globe continued — Miocene Atlantis — Glacial Epoch . 30 v. Glacial Epoch continued ........... 43 vi. Mammals — Classification and Mutual Affinities . . . . 51 vii. Distribution of Man — Black and White Races 56 vm. Distribution of Man continued — Hill Tribes of India — Rank and Priority of Black and White Races .......... 66 rx. Monkeys — Extinct and Living ......... 73 x. Lemuridae — Fauna of Madagascar 82 xi. Carnivora — Affinities — Extinct Feline Species — Origin and Distribution — Bone-caves in Brazil — Mauvaises Terres ....... 85 xii. Carnivora continued — Existing Feline Species — Their Distribution in Borneo . 93 xiii. Carnivora continued — Dogs and Foxes 105 xrv. Carnivora continued — Weasels — Polecats — Otters — Badgers .... 113 xv. Carnivora continued — Arctocyonida) . . . ... . . .117 xvi. Carnivora continued — Bears .......... 118 xvii. Carnivora continued — Seals — Extinct Species — Existing Species — Seals in Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal — Walrus ....... 123 IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE xvm. Hoofed-mammals (Ungulata) — Classification 132 xix. Hoofed-mammals continued — Horses ........ 134 xx. Hoofed-mammals continued — Ruminants — Camels — Oxen ..... 137 xxi. Ruminants continued — Sheep and Goats — Antelopes — Camelopards . . . 143 xxii. Ruminants continued — Deer — Reindeer — Inquiry into their Origin in North America, Greenland, Spitzbergen 149 xxm. Ruminants continued — Musk-deer — Chevrotains — Anoplotheridae . . . 161 xxiv. Artiodactylian Non-Ruminants — Swine — Peccary — Hippopotamus . . . 164 xxv. Multungula — Palaeotheridae — Nesodontidae — Macrauchenia — Tapirs . . 167 xxvi. Multungula continued — Rhinoceros ......... 171 xxvii. Multungula continued — Extinct Elephants — Mastodon — Mammoth . . . 178 xxviii. Multungula continued — Existing Elephants — Question as to Distinctness of Su- matran Species — Elephants in Borneo ....... 191 xxix. Multungula continued — Sirenia — Dinotherium — Manatee — Dugong — Rhytina . 196 xxx. Cetacea — Classification — Whales and Dolphins — Zeuglodon — Platanista . . 205 xxxi. Edentata — Classification — Extinct Species — Date and Range of Megatheroid Species in North America — Existing Species . . . . . .217 xxxit. Insectivora — Classification — Moles — Shrews — Tupaias — Hedgehogs . . . 229 xxxm. Insectivora continued — Bats — Frugivorous Bats — Insectivorous Bats (Leaf-bear ing and not Leaf-bearing) ......... 234 xxxiv. Rodents — Classification — Toxodon 240 xxxv. Rodents continued — Hystricidae — Capybara — Cavies — Chinchillas — Octodons — Echimyina — Agoutis — Porcupine ....... 243 xxxvi. Rodents continued — Hyrax ... ....... 249 xxxvii. Rodents continued — Pikas — Hares ......... 251 xxxviii. Rodents continued — Dormice — Squirrels — Marmots ...... 255 xxxix. Rodents continued — Beavers — Voles — Rats — Mice ...... 263 xl. Marsupials — Classification — Entomophaga — Sarcophaga — Volitantia — Rhizo- phaga — Poephaga — Linguales ......... 283 xmi. Monotremes — Ornithorhynchus — Echidna ....... 293 xlii. Regional Distribution of Mammals . . . 296 xliii. Great and Minor Mammalian Regions ........ 304 Appendix. i. Systems of Classification of Mammals proposed by different Authors of eminence 315 ii. Different Classifications of the Insectivora 319 iii. Synonymic List of Species of Mammals and their Localities .... 330 CONTENTS. PAGE tv. Mammals of Special Districts 365 v. Table of Geographical Distribution of the Lagothricinae ..... 408 vi. Families or Characteristic Forms of Living Non-Marine Mammals peculiar to Special Districts, viz : — .......... 1. Families or Characteristic Forms present both in Africa south of the Sahara, and the Indian region, and found nowhere else ...... 409 2. Families or Characteristic Forms present in Africa south of the Sahara, and not in the Indian region ; and in the Indian region and not in the African 409 3. Families or Characteristic Forms present in Europe or Asia north of the Himma- layahs, and found neither in Africa south of the Sahara, nor in the Indian region 410 4. Families or Characteristic Forms found in Europe, and not in Asia ; or vice versa ............ 410 5. Families or Characteristic Forms found in the Northern half of North America and the Europeo- Asiatic region, and nowhere else ... . .410 6. Families or Characteristic Forms peculiar to the New World, and found in both South and North America . . . . . . . .411 7. Families or Characteristic New World Forms found in South America, and not in North America ; and in North America and not in South . . 411 vii. Letter from Mr. Palgrave as to the relations of Arabia (received too late to be embodied in the work) .......... 411 Index 413 MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Map TO FACE r AQK Frontispiece — Figures of Antechinus minutissimus and Mus delicatulus. „ Diagram of Geological Formations ....... x 1. Showing approximately the 100-Fa thorn line of Soundings ..... 1 2. Showing the approximate effect of a Depression of the Land, 600 feet ... 1 3. Showing approximately what is known of the Tertiary and Quaternary formations, and generally the Land, including Mountain-ranges, which was probably under Water during the Tertiary, or not long before the Glacial Epoch ... 1 4. Showing the portions of the Earth where marks of Glacial action have been observed or are on strong grounds, believed to occur ....... 1 5. Showing approximately the rising and falling Land at the present day ... 28 5*. Sargassum Seas ............. 34 6. Distribution of Man ............. 56 7. Monkeys 72 8. Anthropoid Apes i 9. Baboons . ) 10. Prehensile-tailed Monkeys \ „,.,.,[••■•: 80 11. Lemuridae and Galeopithecidae ) 12. Places where remains of Carnivora have been observed in formations prior to Glacial Epoch 86 13. Lion 14. Tiger ! 15. Leopards and Jaguars j 16. Puma [ 92 1 17. Fossil Hyaenas 102 18. Existing Hyaenas j viii MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. MAp TorACEPAOE 19. Viverridae — Civet Cats, Ichneumons, Paradoxuri 1 . . . 20. Wolves . 21. Canidae . 22. Canis fulvus. Red Fox 23. Otters . 24. Mustelidae — Weasels, &c. . ) 25. Skunks — Mephitis — Mydaus and Helictis } 26. Bears ........ i --^ 27. Racoons — Coati-Mundis — Kinkajou and Binturong ) 28. Seals 122 28*. Walrus and Rhytina 128 29. Hippopotamus — Fossil and Living i - fi , 30. Swine . . . . •. f 106 108 114 TragulidaB and Moschidae | - _« Deer — Reindeer ' Antelopes ) - . _ 140 31. 32. Deer — Reindeer " 33. 34. Goats 35. Sheep .... 1 142 36. Musk Ox — Living and Fossil ) 37. Bovidae i 38. Buffaloes j 39. Camelopards j 40. Camels | 41. Horses and -Asses 42. Do. Living and Extinct ! 43. Anoplotherium ) j„„ 44. Tapir and Palaeotherium I 45. Hyrax .....) m 46. Rhinoceros — Living and Extinct I 47. Mastodons and Elephants in Lower Miocene Epoch i 48. Do. Upper Miocene Epoch ) 49. Do. Pliocene Epoch i 50. Elephants — Existing ... I 51. Sirenia 198 52. Right and Sperm Whales • 206 134 MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. IX / Hap To face Paoe 53. Whale-bone Whales 208 54. Finner — Megaptera longimana l 55. Fossil Cetacea, including Zeuglodon ) 56. Grampus, Porpoise, &c. (Phocaena)) '! j 220 57. Delphinidae — Dolphins 58. Edentata — Fossil 59. Do. Existing 60. Anteaters — Orycteropus — Manis — Armadillos | 61. Sloths i 62. Insectivora ) 230 63. Moles ) 64. Shrews ... \ 232 65. Hacroscelides and Tupaias ) 66. Hedgehogs — European Hedghog — Centetes ) f ....... rbOQ 67. Pteropi — Frugivorous Bats ) 68. Istiophora — Leaf-nosed Bats . F . . i 236 69. Bats — Vespertilios 70. Lagomys 250 71. Hares 72. Hystricidae , . I 242 73. Cavies 74. Chinchillas , , . . . . 244 75. Echimyina 76. Porcupines , * !■ 248 77. Beavers ; 270 1 1 78. Pouched Rats ....... 79. Rats and Mice — Exclusive of semi-domesticated Species I 80. Jumping Mice — Meriones and Hapalotis ) „ 81. Gophers ) 82. Jerboas, &c. ) „S9 83. Spalacini ) 84' Vole\ } 266 85. Lemmings ) 86. Musk Rat ) 264 87. Dormice ) b MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Map 88. Spermophilus — Ground Squirrel 89. Spermophilus Parryi and Spermophilus Eversmanni 90. Marmot . . . ) 91. Tamias — Striped Squirrel j 92. Xerus — Bristly Squirrel ] 93. Squirrel ... ) 94. Flying Squirrels and Petaurus ...... 95. Marsupials ......... 96. Opossums and Kangaroos ) 97. Marsupial Carnivora ) 98. Myrmecobius and Tarsipes — Ornithorhynchus and Echidna 99. Vermilingual Species ....... 100. Great Mammalian Regions ...... 101. Minor Subdivisions of Great Mammalian Regions TO FACE PAOl 260 258 254 256 286 288 292 304 308 PERIOD p&OCIAL DR«t OH BOULDER pur ! — ~pTe i sTociTt i'ToW^as16^~< j - pliocene -formatiohs - ENUMERATION & SECTION lIK CEOLOCICAL FORMATIONS. >- o: o < o i- «c Q. U Ui 0. MIQCENE FORMATIONS - 8.000 FF.ETW STRATA DEPTH IN FEF.T. Recent EOCENE FORMATIONS :2367„ FEET CHALK FORMATIONS 37iLO FEET OOLITIC formations .3330 FEET TRIASSJC FORMATIONS 3.000 FEET ■-? [eeifetahlc mould. . Write or Bouletcr clay {Superficial cUposits Pleistocene /#"/>'' A-liw Gravels. [S-orwich thll) ,,.. [Reel (rati Pliocene \r ,,. ,, \toraMuie. trag.. [Sands ef Richiaond. Hri1uiui Vifayeiiee basin. . Miocene JFaldiuis of Taaramt iSewalik formations [Hamp-itead series (115*) /L'fper Eocene (Aw/vtA/? sine* I j Osborne series | Middle or )#„„/„„ „ /Paris KoreiieiD r.ocene < yiiaejsfiot s, senns series Cluilk ^ • — - — -* OLD RED SANLTSTONE D O c D- -3.0 0 0 FEET — , ^_: a- _ — DEVONIAN 6.000 FORMATIONS FEET Lower Chalk a i h. UPPER— SILUR IAN 8350 FEET FORMATIONS i: Oolitic or Jurassic formntjons (bdord or middle Oolite Balk w lower Oolitp — t 2 6.0 0 0 - F E ET - \ \ [Tfuwet Sand iMaestricht Oialk. \wiutt Chalk with fhnts • r <n ii I White Oialk mUwut- Flints l'FMk(W ,„al.l I Upper Creen Sand- . .. \ (ill id t Lower Gruei Sand Speeton Cla V . Wia Id Clav . VeaWmBeds^. jltnd iPue-bcck Beds . Pcrtani or \por,illlld Beds upper Oolite fr,. ., ... \hi mmtridije day I Upper Calcaneus Grit' Coral ra4 ifloMic Limestone. [Lower Calcaneus Crie ' Oxford Clay iCornbraah Corcibrash iForcst Marble [Hitidlciil Clay .. [Freestone d-- Rag 'Great Oolite \SlomM)M Siatr Fullers Earth rRaetstene 'inkruvOoYltt-'FreeslcM [Pea Crrut, Lias . . iheuper Triassic U/nsr/ielkalk [Banter Saridstein Permian Marls J' limestone I-Magnes1an Limestcne (out measures formations M^e '"■" i.Weuntairi Limestone \Ca rlvn ife rous Slate Devonian Devonian group (Upper Ludlow Rock IAymestrv Limestone Lower Ludlew Rock iWenleek group > Mavhill group [Upper Llandevery Beds Lower Llandoeeiy Metis (-my tdec Sandstcne Ltandcilo Flags Lirupila (tags Cambrian Rocks Ludlow group r Upper Silurian .3 s .fO 50 > ■10 cr ) < \ 8.000 1 I- □: 115 ul 10 181 1- 1.270 480 wa 90 100 500 600 100 100 150 850 60 280 1,000 > ; 9oo < 1 ° } 780 z 1 \ O o UJ \ 550 M 1.100 1.000 O0P IfiOO 300 750 IZooo 1.600 1.500 o 4.650 - 3.000 6.000 o M 1500 o 1.850 m ■ 4MOO j 1.000 < 9.000 0. 5000 5.000 26.000 hVo-.Shi ■Lnutfvd;Lith. CLASSIFICATION OF MAMMALS, ADOPTED IN THIS WORK. Note. — The Geological formations in which remains of the different families have been found are indicated by the Asterisks. Recess of Glacial Epoch. Access of Glacial Epoch. Miocene. Eocene. Secondary. QTTADRUHANA. 1. ANTHROPIDjE * ? •• •• 2. PITHECIDJ3. 1. Catarrhini * * * • • 2. Plattrhini * * ? 3. Arctopithecini * * ■> •• 3. LEMURIDiE. 1 . Lemurini •• 2. Cheiromtjni • • ■ 3. Galeopithecini * •• •• •• CAENIVORA. 1. FELIDiE * * * •• 2. VIVERRIDiE * * * •• 3. HY^ENIDjE * * •■ •• 4. CANID^ * * * * 5. MUSTELID^ * * * •• 6. PLANTIGRADA. 1. Arctocyonid-e * * * * 2. URsro-a: * * ? XII CLASSIFICATION OF MAMMALS. 7. PINNIPEDIA. 1. Phociu^ . . 1. Phocinae 2. Otarinae 2. Trichechid-s: UNGULATA. 1. MONODACTTLA. 1. SOLIDUNGDLA 2. ARTIODACTYLA. 1. RUMINANTIA. 1. Camelidee 2. Bovidae 1. Ovibos . . 2. Bison . . 3. Bubalus 4. Bos 3. Capridae. 1. Ovin<B.. 2. Caprints 4. Antilopidaa 1. Bovina . . 2. Catablepas 3. Bubalus 4. Oryx . . 5. Gazella 6. Tragelaphus 7. Antilope 8. Redunca 9. Oreotragus 10. Cephalophus 1 1 . Tetracerus 5. Camelopardidae . . 6. Cervidae 7. Moschidaa Recess of Glacial Epoch. * * * * * * * * * * * Access of Glacial Epoch. * * * * * * Miocene. Eocene. Secondary. * * * CLASSIFICATION OF MAMMALS. X1U 8. Tragulidae. 1. Tragulus 2. Hyomoschus 3. Dichobune 9. Anoplotheridae . . 2. NON-RUMINANTIA. 1. Dicotylidte 2. Suidae 3. Hippopotamidae 3. MULTUNGULATA. 1. Paljeothehid^; 2. Nesodontid-s 3. Tapirim: . 4. Nasicornia 5. Proboscidea. 1. Mastodontidre . . 2. Elephantidae 6. Sirenia. 1 . Dinotheridae 2. Manatidae CETACEA. 1. B&LJEKTDJE 2. DELPHINIDJB . 3. ZEUGLODONTID J5 EDENTATA. 1. BRADYPODID^ . . 1. Gravigrada . . 2. Tardiorada . . 2. DASYPODIDjE 3. SCUTATA .. Recess of Access of Glacial Glacial Miocene. Eocene. Secondary. Epoch. Epoch. * * * , . , . * * •• •• * * •• ■• •• * * •• * * . . * * * •■ •• * * * ■• •• * * * •• *** •• •• * * * •• •• * * * . . # * * •• •• * * * * * * * , . • ■ * * * * •• •■ • ■ ' ' * * ' * ? * •• * •• * * * * ? ' •• ' Cuvier and Owen ascribe the remains of the Maorothirium qiqanteum (on which the existence of Scutata, in the Miocene, rests) to an animal allied to the Manis; Gervais to an Orycteropus ; Giebel to one of the Dasypodidje. XIV CLASSIFICATION OF MAMMALS. EDENTATA (continued). 4. MYRMECOPHAGA.. INSECTIVORA. 1. TALPIDyE .. 2. SORICIDyE .. 3. MACROSCELIDES 4. TUPAIADiE.. 5. ERINACIDiE 6. CENTETIDiE CHEIROPTERA. 1. FRUGIVORA 2. ENTOMOPHAGA 1. istiophora 2. Gymnorhini . . RODENTIA. 1. TOXODONTIDiE .. 2. HYSTRICKQJE 1. Caviinje 2. ClllNCHILLINje . . 3. OCTODONTINjE . . 4. EciIIMYINjE 5. Dasyproctinje 6. Hystricinje 3. HYRACIDyE.. 4. LEPORIDvE 1 . Lagoiiys 2. Lepus 5. MYOXIDiE .. 6. SCIURID>E .. Recess of Glacial Epoch. * * * * * Access of Glacial Access. Miocene. Eocene. Secondary. * * * * * * CLASSIFICATION OF MAMMALS. XV SCIURIDiE (continued) 1 . Xerus 2. Rhinoscidros . . 3. Scicrus 4. Pteromys 1. Sciuropterus 2. Pteromys 5. Tamias . . 6. Spermophilus. . - 7. Cynomts 8. Arctomys 7. PECTIN ATORIDiE.. 8. MURIDiE 1. Castorinve 2. ARVICOLINjE 3. Spalicinje 4 s accom yisjf. 5. Cricetin^e 6. Sigmodontes 7. Hesperomyin^e 8. Morin>v. 9. Sminthin.e 10. Merionides 11. Dipodin.e MARSUPIALIA. 1 . Entomophaga 1. Antechini . . 2. Phascogale 2. Sarcopiiaga 1. Dasyuridje . . 2. DlDELPHIDES 3. Phalangette 3. Volitantia 1 . Petauri 4. Rhtzopiiaga 1. PhASCOI.OWYIDJE Recess of Access of Glacial Epoch. Glacial , Epoch. Miocene. Eocene. Secondary. •• * * * * * * * * * * * * •• - . . . . * * * * * • * * * •• •• •• * * * * * * * " * * * * * XVI CLASSIFICATION OF MAMMALS. MARSUPIALIA (continued). 5. PoEPHAGA 1. Macropidje . . 2. Stereognathid.e 3. Peramelid/k 6. LlNGUALES 1. Tarsipes 2. Mtrmecobius 3. Microlestidje MONOTREMATA. 1. Echidna .. 2. Ornithorhynchus Eecess of Access of Glacial Epoch. Glacial Epoch. Miocene. Eocene. Secondary. * •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• " * • ' * * * :: •• •• •• " " ■' •• •• D.iyS-oon kLimtnl ■ L1tji no wo /.;,• MAP II. SHOWING THE APPROXIMATE EFFECT OF A DEPRESSION OF THE LAND 600 FEET. no nut iso 1 L J■. *>? 120 tie too so o»mrs 6P SO 40 3O ?w \ - 10 30 30 40 SO 60 70 .90 too I1O IW IXC MO ISO H» 170 ■M'lad no wo >so 140 130 ne no too so so 70 ee so -to 30 to •-•l' 30 SO 60 70 SO 90 100 HO 120 i.V HO ISO ISO 170 s o IT II a s 1 I■-'■ * -W SO 60 70 SO too no no 1Mj l-Hl ISO 160 170 WN !.- no i6o ise 140 130 izo no too so so SHOWING THE PORTIONS OF THE EARTH WHERE MARKS OF GLACIAL ACTION HAVE BEEN OBSERVED OR ARE ON STRONG GROUNDS BELIEVED TO OCCUR. So '***7^* °A no tie mo mo iso izo no too 70 e» SO 40 30 W ■fi{ yxjuirj) mjs?A■(I J' t.i li ra: L'u M '■: u tfl i- *r &: INTRODUCTION. OBJECT AND PLAN OF THE AVORK MAPS EXPLAINED — SUBSIDENCE ELEVATION — TERTIARY FORMATIONS — GLACIAL ACTION SARGASSO SEAS DISTRIBUTION. The great amount of information which has of late years been accumulated regarding the Geo graphical Distribution of Plants and Animals renders it very desirable that it should be classified and displayed, so that some general and connected view of the facts, and of their bearing on each other, may be obtained. To do this is the object of the present work. I shall to a certain extent follow the arrangement suggested by Schouw,* and adopted by Decandollef and others in regard to plants, and consider the subject under two aspects equivalent to those which in Zoology Van Der Hoevenf has recently proposed to distinguish respectively by the names of " Geographical Zoology " and " Zoological Geography," the former referring to the range of species, the latter to the Faunas of districts, and treat each great class separately and independently upon both these points. I shall commence with the former, and shall first pass the different families in each class under review, giving an account of their distribution, and affinities. Their history and that of their nearest relatives during past geological epochs is a most impor tant point in relation to this, and to these I propose to give special attention ; and I shall endeavour, by the aid of maps, to exhibit the facts more clearly and comprehensively than I could otherwise do. On these maps the localities where the groups or species are found will be marked ; and the districts where they are most fully or most feebly represented will, when necessary, be shown by different in tensities of colour. To save expense, and so to allow of greater use being made of maps than would otherwise be the case, they have been drawn of three sizes, so that, when a mere general reference is required the smaller ones may be used, and the larger be reserved for those cases which require more detail. Where the distribution of a species or group is peculiar, any speculations which have been made as to its cause will be noticed. After a full inquiry into the Geographical Zoology of each class, I shall conclude its history with a summary of its Zoological Geography. The geographical distribution of each class will thus form an independent treatise by itself. While the work is mainly addressed to the scientific naturalist, it is also intended for the general reader ; and with this view, scientific names will be avoided whenever there are * Schouw, "Grundzeuge einer allgemcincn Pflanzengcographie." Berlin, 1823, p. 4. t Decandolle, "Geographic Botauique." Paris and Geneva, 1855. X J. Van Der Hoeven, " Philoaophia Zoologica." Leyden, 1864, p. 375. 2 INTRODUCTION. English ones to express the meaning. For the same reason, in addition to displaying in correlative order the distribution of plants and animals throughout the globe, so that the facts may be analysed and reasoned on, I shall make it an object to supply general information regarding the habitats of those plants or animals as to which the educated reader is most likely to feel curiosity. References to authorities will be given whenever they seem likely to be useful. Every naturalist must have felt the want of such references when searching for information on any subject ; and in the present case they are especially necessary, for the Zoologist is often unfamiliar with Botany, the Botanist with Zoology, and the specialist at sea when he gets beyond the limits of his own territory ; and yet none of them can proceed far in their work without having frequent occasion to know something relating to the geographical distribution of other organized beings which incidentally come in con nexion with the subject of their studies. I have endeavoured in my references to hit the medium between a burthensome display of erudition, and a selection too meagre to be of use. It is right for me to say that I should never have ventured to undertake a work of such extended scope, were it not for the promised aid and support of many naturalists eminent in those depart ments in which I am myself more especially deficient. To assist the non-geological reader in following any speculations in which extinct animals arc concerned, I have given a diagram, showing the succession of geological strata, and their respective thickness. I have also given several maps of a general nature. The first is one representing the 100 fathom line of coast ; that is, the line outside of which no soundings are obtained at a depth of 100 fathoms (600 feet), so that it shows what would be the configuration of the dry land if it were everywhere raised 600 feet. I have to thank Captain Richards and the other officers of the Hydrographic department of the Admiralty for the kindness and liberality with which they enabled me to prepare this map, by giving me access to the charts in their possession, as well as ready information on every point on which I applied to them. The second map represents what would be the probable coast-line if the whole land were depressed 600 feet. It is unnecessary to say that this is much less accurate, notwithstanding that I have had the advantage of the materials in the Geographical Society's possession. Com paratively few of the lower altitudes of the earth's surface are known ; it is, therefore, not to be taken as more than a very conjectural approximate essay. A third map shows the parts of the earth on which tertiary and quaternary formations have been ascertained to occur, that is, those which were probably under water at the time of the glacial epoch or not long previously. A fourth map shows, so far as known, the localities where glacier action or remains of the drift or boulder clay have been remarked. My best thanks are due to Professor Ramsay for the readiness with which he has imparted to me his copious information both on this and other subjects. Nevertheless this map, too, is merely offered as a distant approximation. The importance of the effects of the glacial epoch, however, renders even such an imperfect tentative very desirable for the proper understanding of the questions arising out of the action of that period. INTRODUCTION. 3 A fifth map is given, showing the lands which are supposed to bo now rising and those now sinking. The portion of this latter map which relates to the Northern Hemisphere is drawn from various sources, but much of it is conjectural and inferential, little being known of the greater part of it. The portion relating to the Southern Hemisphere has been chiefly deduced from the data laid down by Mr. Darwin in the map published in his volume on "Coral For mations." Prof. Edward Forbes, in speaking of the Gulf weed in the Atlantic, suggested that it might indicate the spot where land had been submerged, and as botanists are disposed to admit that the Sargassum bacciferum, or Gulf weed, is only another form of the Sargassum vulgare, which fringes our own coasts, it seemed not an improbable conjecture, and its presence must always be taken into account in any speculations on the past changes of the distribution of land and sea. I have, therefore, added a map in which the different Sargassum Seas are laid down. I had hoped to have given a seventh general map, illustrative of Dr. Forschammer's con clusions regarding the regional distribution of different kinds of sea-water. That gentleman has made this the subject of investigation, and has communicated the results to the Royal Society in a paper on the component parts of sea-water in all quarters of the globe. These results have induced him to divide the sea into sixteen regions, each distinguished by different physical qualities. It will be most interesting to compare how far these correspond with the regional distribution of sea animals and sea plants. Unfortunately his paper has not yet been published. Before I reach the Fishes I trust that this will have been done, and that I may then be able to give a map showing Dr. Forschammer's sea-water regions. The order in which I shall pass the different animals and plants in review, is that known as the descending order, viz. commencing with Man and going down the scale of Nature, until we reach the lowest organisms of animal life. Perhaps the most natural course, when I have reached that stage, would be then to enter on the vegetable kingdom by the lowest links in its scale, which can hardly be distinguished from the like links in the animal kingdom, and to work upwards to the highest. I think on the whole, however, that it will be found more convenient to treat the vegetable kingdom as a parallel scries, and deal with it also in the descending order. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES — ORIGIN OF SPECIES SPECIFIC CENTRES. Before entering on the special subject of this work, there are one or two topics on which I should wish to make some profession of faith. The chief of these is Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of species. A man's opinion on this subject must necessarily and unconsciously modify his views on many other important points, and it becomes a matter of some moment to the reader to know from what point of view the author regards things. When he once knows that, the reader can himself apply a compensation-balance to reduce the author's conclusions to his own standard. I the more desire to explain the views which I now hold regarding the origin of species, that some years since (shortly after the first appearance of Mr. Darwin's work), I took exception to it, and urged various objections to his theory.* Some of these I still maintain, but others I have seen reason to modify. If it were a mere recantation that I had to make, a couple of lines would be sufficient for that purpose ; I should not detain the reader long in announcing that whereas I had formerly been an opponent of Mr. Darwin's views, I was now a supporter. But it is not so. In some respects, I have come nearer to Mr. Darwin's views ; but in others I still differ from him, if not as much as before, at least sufficiently to render some explanation necessary to the understanding of my opinions. It is not, however, by way of opposition to his that I offer mine. The reader will see that mine are rather of the nature of a sequel to his, or an attempt to work out the truth by the light of his previous labours. If I have been in any respect successful in throwing more light upon the subject, I owe it to the ideas suggested by his works. The objections which I took to his theory were not to the origin of species by derivation or descent — but to the machinery by which he supposed this to take place ; viz., development by long-continued gradual variation and selection through the struggle for life. I thoroughly accepted the theory that species are not produced by independent creation, but that, under the operation of a general law, the germs of organisms produce new forms different from themselves, when particular circumstances call the law into action. I held very much the invo lution theory of Bonnet and Priestley, f " that all the germs of future plants, organical bodies of all kinds, and the reproducible parts of them, were really contained in the first germ." That theory appeared to me to furnish a satisfactory explanation of the homologies in structure and of the relationships between species which are everywhere apparent throughout the organized world. If, on the concurrence of particular circumstances, a law comes into action effecting an * " Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh," 16th | Priestley, " Disquisitions relating to Matter and January, 1860. Spirit," vol. i. p. 201. Birmingham, 1782. ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 5 alteration on the germ which is about to be developed, it follows, that in those points where the law has not affected the germ, it should have the same form as in the parent ; and on those points where it has affected the germ, it must produce the alteration, not by creation of new parts, but by alteration of those already existing. If fins are wanted where legs were before, they must be obtained not by the creation of a new organ, but by the alteration of the parts of the leg ; hence the existence of homologies between them. No doubt Mr. Darwin's slow and imper ceptible variation produces homologies too ; but inasmuch as the establishment (not the first appear ance, but the establishment) of such changes, is in his theory dependent on the variation being such as to enable the animal to come off successful in the struggle for life, it seemed to me less applicable to those variations (and many such exist), where, so far as we can see, the change has no beneficial effect in that struggle. I did not deny the existence of much variation, and of its being continued, to a certain extent, by inheritance ; neither did I ignore the possible bearing of hybridization on the question ; nor did I dispute the existence of the struggle for life, and that that influence cleared away the weakly, and left the strongly endowed. But with perfect conviction on these points, I had not succeeded in bringing my mind to accept the possibility of a new species being eliminated out of any amount of gradual variation, hybridization, or struggle for life, either taken singly or in combination. What impressed me more than anything else was the absence of any transitional forms or geological evidence in support of the idea ; I argued that if such transition really existed, it ought to have either been seen or to have left traces of its having been ; but no form has yet been discovered among fossil remains, which can fairly be adduced, as showing a gradation of form passing, during the course of time, from one species to another. Species varying to a greater or less degree are there found as we find them existing now ; but they occur at the same time, and have never been found gradually increasing in diversity through successive strata, until they reach the proportions of a new species. In like manner, I looked in vain for any transitional form of existing animals in the act of passing from one type to another. It appeared to me impossible for them to exist consistently with the preservation of the order which we see in Nature. I argued that if the transition were slow and gradual, there must be a multitude of individuals in different stages of progression towards species, and branching out right and left from the old one, and consequently the homogeneity which is essential to the character of species could not exist : they would never have time to settle into a species. No sooner would one have reached that degree of divergence from the type, than its descendants must start again on a fresh progress of variation. If Nature were provided with a brake by which she could moderate and arrest the progress of variation when the species was completed, the case would be different. But according to Mr. Darwin, not only time but variation runs its ceaseless course. Were it not for that, we could realise the idea that A produced B slightly changed ; B produced C more changed ; C produced D still more altered, and so on until the entire change was effected, always provided that the variation then stopped. But it does not so. Like the Wandering Jew, it must go on — on — without ceasing ; no sooner arrived than it must start again. This would be the result of variation, supposing it to be accomplished through singlo individuals, forming specific centres ; and it appeared to me, that it would be still more hopeless if we abandoned the origin of species through single individuals, and adopted the view of species originating not in individuals, but in numbers. Then we should have to deal not with a change affecting one individual, one child from each parent, but with one extending over a whole army of descendants ; and I came to the conclusion that it was inconsistent with what we know of the 6 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. variation which we see daily in operation, that in those descendants of different broods, exactly the same kind and degree of variation, and in the same direction, should occur in all. It seemed to mo still more incredible that each of the members of all these broods should produce exactly the same amount and kind of further variation in their many broods ; and so on, through a longer or shorter period. There should, on this principle, be a multitude of varieties, and not one type only. This seemed to me sound reasoning ; and it is sound, from the premises assumed. But a doubt has -begun to grow in my mind as to the soundness of one part of the premises. I have no doubt as to the fallacy of this constant persistence of change ; but I am not so clear as I was, that it is an impossibility for Nature when she does make a change to make the transition gradually or over large bodies simultane ously, and yet show no traces of the process. I think I see some facts which imply as much, and I think I see what the brake is by means of which the progress of change is arrested. We know that throughout the world, multitudes both of local and climatal varieties occur, which, whether they are species or varieties, still possess one common facies. There are dozens of forms of plants and insects from North America, which are so like European individuals of the same species, that no one would think of separating them ; and yet any botanist or entomologist will tell without fail from which side of the Atlantic each specimen came. There are similar varieties of man in every land. How have these differences of form been produced ? On this point we are not wholly left without direction ; we have a faint glimmering of light, because we have seen a race of man formed under our own eyes, the Anglo — or rather the Europco-American nation, aa distinct and well marked a race as any other ; and yet the change has been effected over the whole of the United States without any transition men ever having been observed ; and what is still more extraordinary, it has been effected over the whole of the region where it occurs at the same time. The race has apparently not been produced by an American being born from an Englishman, and then by his propagating young Americans, but hundreds of thousands have had the same impress affixed upon them over the length and breadth of the land at the same time. Agassiz may be right, after all, although not in the sense in which, I imagine, he meant it, when he contended for a multiple origin of species. Now, according to the reasoning in which I trusted, there should have been no Anglo-American nation, — the type should have been frittered away in a thousand different directions. A congeries of all kinds of different degrees of change should have been jumbled up together, leaving no distinguishable character by which to know the American from any other nation. And yet, there he is, a nation per se; known to "Punch," — known to passport officers, — known to ourselves, — easily identified, easily figured, and easily caricatured. So, I believe, there is a modern Mexican race ; a modern Brazilian ; modern Negroes, and a modern Australian race is far on the way. Although the example of the American is, perhaps, the most striking I could select, being almost the only one where man has had the opportunity, or, at least, has had the occasion forced upon him, of observing such a change, there is no reason to doubt that what has occurred with him has also taken place in a multitude of other varieties. Such an argumentum ad hominem is hard to get over, and I do not mean to attempt to do so. I have come to the conclusion to accept the fact, that Nature can produce a new type without our being able to see the marks of transition, and that she can alter a whole race simultaneously without its passing through the phase of development from an individual in whom the entire change was first perfected. In the case alluded to, the prepotent typical influence has been impressed on the whole ; no doubt, by derivation, but still by some additional influence affecting many at the same ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 7 time. If this is the case with varieties, I think it must follow that the same principle may also act in the formation of species. The difficulty in drawing the distinction between a variety and a species seems a sufficient reason for holding that if we find a principle affecting the production of the one, it will also apply to the other. At any rate, it will not be the Darwinians who will object to the same measure being applied to both ; and as to their opponents, I have no fresh argument beyond what may be inferred from the above to bring to bear upon them. I need scarcely say that, in other respects, this change in my views brings me no nearer Mr. Darwin. In the alteration which has been made in the European races by transfer to America, I see no indication of the principle of constant change, nor selection, nor yet of the struggle for life, which are essential parts of his theory. These are the chief differences between his views and mine. He believes that in all organic beings a certain degree of change is at all times unintermittingly going on ; and that, from that variation and selection, through the struggle for life, new species are being incessantly developed. He believes that the portals of the manufactory of new species are constantly open, and the process always going on. He makes ample provision for instability ; none for stability. I believe that the gates are habitually shut, but that they are always ready to be opened to a greater or less width at a touch of the key, and that that key is change in the conditions under which species live. It does not matter what the change is, nor in what direction it takes place. It has no relation to adap tation nor teleological purposes, it may be for their comfort or discomfort ; for their benefit or the reverse ; its bearing on their organization is a matter of indifference ; all that is wanted is change of some kind or other to ruffle the repose of the pool. The only relation in kind, which I can conceive between the alteration of condition and the change of species is that the greater and more sudden the change of circumstances the greater and more divergent is the change in the species. On the other hand, it is plain to me that there must be some law which arrests variation and confines it within certain bounds. Mr. Bentham has truly said, " Every species has certain determinate limits of variation, which it only exceeds under exceptional circumstances, and the exceptionally abnormal forms thus produced are few in individuals, and are not reproduced." I imagine that the law which secures this stability of species is inertia. So long as they are not meddled with they stand still; but subject them to change, — whether it comes to them, or they go to it, — give them an impulse of any kind, and variation commences. Some receive the impulse more easily than others. What may be felt by one may not bo felt by another. Con stitutions differ : hence, the greater range of some species than others ; but whenever the change makes itself felt, then I apprehend modification commences ; and as we go along, we shall, I think, find instances, such as the half-completed species of the circumpolar regions, hovering between varieties and species, which prove that the degree of modification which takes place in species, bears some relation to the amount of alteration on the conditions of their existence ; and it may be, that change once induced works more vigorously in warm than in cold climates. It is well known to hybridizers that it is not until the second generation of hybrids " that those which do not all revert to the specific types give rise to that irregular variation which induces, after some generations, that chaos of undecided forms, in the face of which all the efforts of botanical describers miscarry."* It is not until the barrier has been broken down that these irregularities commence ; that once done, there is no end to them. A somewhat parallel case is quoted by Sir Charles Lyell from tho * Naudin, in " Comptes Kendus do 1' Academic des Sciences." Nov. 21, 1864. 8 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. observations of the late Dr. Turner, " that when mineral matter is in a ' nascent state,' that is to say, just liberated from a previous state of chemical combination, it is most ready to unite with other matter, and form a new chemical compound."* In other words, inertia once destroyed, and motion given, impulse is more readily received and propagated. The ordinary state of quiescence will be resumed as soon as the animal has become habituated to the alteration ; but by that time it is no longer the same animal, it has become a new species. In this way, and in this way only, do I think that hybridization may have some influence in producing a new species, viz., by disturbing the normal stability of an earlier species, and preparing it to receive an impulse from less alteration of condition than would otherwise have affected it. It may be objected to this hypothesis, that it is inconsistent with our experience of exotic plants which have been naturalized in this country. We have plenty of plants which have been brought from the other side of the world, and have been grown for a couple of hundred years in this country, and yet no alteration is perceptible upon them. My answer to this is, that one essential element in my theory is, that the change is effected through the medium not of single individuals, but of a multitude of individuals — a whole nation of the same species ; and I know of no instance in which such an agglomeration of exotic species has ever existed in this country. We can easily conceive that where the individuals are isolated or in small numbers, any change which might show itself upon one or two of their descendants may have escaped our observation, and become extinguished before it was established for want of individuals through which to propagate, develope, and extend it. Moreover, the process of change is obviously gradual and imperceptible, and extends over a greater space of time than we have had the opportunity of observing. Again, the species may have been of those possessing constitutions adapted to admit without feeling them considerable variation in their conditions of life ; and lastly, it is not absolutely true that no change has been observed ; our observations in this country are made on plants or animals which are soon killed by the climate, if the conditions of life are not pretty well suited to their constitution. Where the climate is warmer, it seems that a greater change of condition can be borne than in cold countries without killing the species ; and in tropical lands a change is cer tainly observed. In cattle, the Pelones and Calougas now existing in the warmer and warmest parts respectively of South America, having been changed from ordinary cattle so much that the former has only very fine short hair, and the latter no hair at all. The effect of climate on the wool of sheep is well known ; and Mr. Winwood Reade, in speaking of the different animals and plants introduced into West Africa, speaks of a marked change in all. The horse rapidly deteriorates, and in some places cannot be kept alive at all. The sheep change in other respects than their wool ; the very dogs, which we should expect to bear the change at least as well as their masters, alter under the baleful climate. " In process of time," writes Bosman, " our dogs alter strangely here ; their cars grow long and stiff like those of foxes, to which colour they also incline, so that in three or four years they degenerate into very ugly creatures ; and in three or four broods their barking turns into a howl." As to plants Mr. Reade says, " It is only on the borders of malarious Africa, that is to say, in Angola and Senegambia, that most foreign plants and vegetables can be made to live ; and these, as Mr. Gabriel of Loanda informed me, completely changed their nature when planted in the African soil."f But although I mention these instances, it is not on them that I rely for an answer to the * Lyell's " Elements of Geology." Sixth edition, 18G5, p, 41. t Reade, Winwood, " Savage Africa," 1SG3, p. 519. ORIGIN OF SPECIES. tf objection. It is the absence of a sufficient number of individuals, and for a sufficiently long time to allow the experiment to be fairly tried. My hypothesis seems also to furnish a satisfactory explanation of a phenomenon which has puzzled naturalists to account for. Professor Owen refers to a special law of nature the remarkable fact that, "with extinct, as with existing mammalia, particular forms were assigned to par ticular provinces, and that the same forms were restricted to the same provinces at a former geological period as at the present day."* Dr. Knox (whose ability at least, if not his judgment, commanded respect) held similar views still more strongly. He maintained that so specially were the inhabitants of every country adapted to that place, that they would thrive there and nowhere else ; and he adduced the inhabitants of the United States, and more especially the New Englanders (they being the portion of them longest exposed to the influence of physical conditions different from those of the countries whence their progenitors came), as an instance to show the effect of a change of country or physical condition, however trifling that might be.f I have applied the illustration to a different purpose ; but the use he made of it was to point to the assumed shortness of their lives, the alleged earlier maturity and more speedy loss of beauty in their women, the rapid decay of their teeth, their restless and unsettled habits, and any other similar peculiarities in which he thought they contrasted unfavourably with the English and German people from whom they sprang, as evidence of deterioration, and insisted that, but for the constant supply of fresh blood from the original stock, they would have been much worse, if not wholly extinct. How he reconciled these fancied ideas of decadence with the general acuteness of the American intellect, and what I may almost admit to be their national supremacy, in ingenuity and constructive faculty ; or how he would have explained away the brilliant courage, chivalrous feeling, and heroic endurance, of which so many bright examples have been lavishly given on both sides during the late unhappy war, is no business of mine. I do not adopt the Doctor's views. I believe in change, but not in deterioration. If progress is to be imported into the question, then amelioration, not de terioration, must be the rule. He, however, maintained that the progress was retrograde, that similar symptoms were already showing themselves in the Australian colonies ; and that so marked was the deterioration in the sheep and cattle, that it was only by the unceasing importation of the best stock from this country that the quality of their flocks and herds was maintained, f This was the dream or fancy of a clever but eccentric man, not perhaps too scrupulous as to the authenticity of his facts ; but Professor Owen's unknown law, at least, is the deliberate opinion of a sober-minded thinker. Sir Charles Lyell, in like manner, thus acknowledges the difficulty, "Dr. Bachman pointed out to me ten genera of birds and ten of quadrupeds, all peculiar to North America, but each represented on the opposite side of the Rocky Mountains by distinct species. The theory of specific centres, or the doctrine that each species of bird and quadruped originated in one spot only, may explain in a satisfactory manner one part of this phenomenon ; for we may assume that a lofty chain of mountains opposed a powerful barrier to migration, and that the mountains were more ancient than the introduction of these particular quadrupeds and birds into the planet. But the limitation of peculiar generic types to certain geographical areas note observed in so many parts of the globe points to some other and higher laic governing the creation of species itself, which in the present state of science is inscrutable to us, and may perhaps remain a mystery for ever."% * Owen, " Report on the Extinct Mammals of Austra- X Ltell's " Second Visit to the United States," vol. i. lia," 1844, and "Palaeontology," 1858, p. 397. 364, 1850. t Knox on the Races of Man, 1862, p. 71 and 73. 10 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. Agassiz, again, says, " Nothing can be more striking to the observer than the fact that animals, though endowed with the power of locomotion, remain within fixed bounds in their geographical distribution, although an unbounded field for migration is open to them in all directions over land, through the air, and through the waters. And no stronger argument can be introduced to show that living beings are endowed with their power of locomotion to keep within general boundaries rather than to spread extensively." * We know well enough what he means by this paradox ; although, if we were inclined to be critical, we might call it rather a Hibernian definition of the purposes of the organs of locomotion, to say that limbs are given us to enable us to stay at home. None of these authors can mean that there is any special attraction for the fauna in the solum of the province. The history of the glacial epoch furnishes us with a thousand instances to the contrary. As the cold retired from the Equator, the glacial inhabitants (produced, as I believe, under its influence) followed in its footsteps. The law they speak of must apply not to the place but to its conditions. The hypothesis which I offer seems to meet all the requirements of the case. Under it, the provinces are preserved special, not by any mysterious emoyri, or peculiar law which prevents their inmates from using their limbs for going abroad, but simply, in the first place, by the inertia, or instinctive regard for personal ease, which leads every creature to remain where it is while it is comfortable, and so not to pass beyond the bounds for which it was originally fitted and best adapted, into others less suited for it. And, in the next place, when by geological changes, in sufficiency of food for growing numbers, or other extraneous causes, it is reluctantly driven out or compelled to pass beyond its natural province, the province is still preserved special either by the death of those which have gone beyond it, or by their transformation (in consequence of their having passed under new conditions of life,) into something else — into a new phase of their old form — in a word, into new species, more or less distant from the original type according to the character of the new conditions. This hypothesis also accords sufficiently well with what we know of the history of species during past geological epochs. If the common belief be well founded that our globe at one stage of its existence was a ball of incandescent matter, which for long went on gradually cooling, it must follow that the more such internal heat made itself felt at the surface, the more uniform the temperature and climate in every country on the face of the earth must have been, and the less the amount of variation in the conditions of life upon it. As the internal heat diminished, the more would the surface become liable to the extraneous influence of heat from the sun, or to unequal degrees of radiation from land and sea; and as their proportions and arrangement varied, the greater would be the variety of the conditions of life upon the surface of the globe and the more frequently would changes in them take place. Now the theoretical result of such a state of things upon the production of species according to the laws which my hypothesis presupposes, would be, that during the earlier periods of the history of the globe, the number and variety of forms of life would be more uniform and fewer in number, and during the later periods when the amount of internal heat was diminishing, the forms of life would be more varied and numerous. The formation of new species being, according to my theory, dependent upon the old ones encountering a new condition of life, where there was only * Agassiz, op. cit. p. 13. ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 11 one condition of life, there could be no change of species. Of course such an absolute unifor mity of heat could not exist ; a pot, although boiling, has not in every point the same degree of heat, therefore different degrees of temperature, in other words, different physical con ditions which might give rise to new species, must at all times have existed on our planet ; but, as in the parallel of the boiling pot, they would not be great (so might often be ineffective), and would not be permanently fixed for any time upon one spot, so that although new species might occasionally be developed, special provinces, or fauna, could not exist, or at least could only do so when the internal heat had been so far reduced as to allow external influences to bestow a more or less permanent character upon particular spots. The greatest change of all, however, must have occurred at the glacial epoch, when probably for the first time in the history of the globe organic life made acquaintance with frost and snow. Then, if there is any truth in my theory, a universal change must have taken place in everything that was exposed to that cold; that is, in fact, in everything beyond the tropics. Now, in relation to this latter point, we find that in none of the strata of a date anterior to the glacial cold are the remains of any boreal animal to be found. Every creature adopted for life in a cold country appears to have been developed, subsequent to that epoch. For example, the mice and the voles are two nearly allied creatures, the former of which is adapted to mild countries, the latter to cold. No mice or rats are found in the arctic circle, but voles abound ; no voles occur in the tropics or warmer temperate regions, but mice are abundant. So the fossil remains of mice are found in the tertiary as well as the recent deposits, but none of any vole until the diluvium deposited subsequent to the commencement of the glacial epoch. The same is to be observed of all boreal animals that I know of, and I believe the rule is universal. I apprehend that the change which took place in the northern hemisphere at the glacial epoch was absolute : nothing that remained to abide the influence of the cold could escape alteration. 'Whatever escaped change did so by taking to flight to the south, and carrying its climate and conditions of life with it. I shall have to discuss these points more at large and in detail hereafter. It is sufficient here to indicate the support that they seem to give to my hypothesis of the origin of species. The facts relating to the appearance of species in the earlier geological formations seem to accord not less exactly with the requirements of this hypothesis. Geologists inform us that in the earlier periods of the world's history the changes of life in the sea (and there appears no reason to suppose that a different law should regulate life in the sea from life on the land) were accomplished at a rate much less rapid than that which prevailed in later times. The premises from which they derive these inferences are no doubt imperfect. They do so by com paring the depth of sedimentary rocks in which indications of life have been found, in the palaeozoic, the mesozoic, and the caenozoic periods. f They assume the amount of changes of life on the whole to be equal in each of these periods, — an assumption which is, perhaps, not warranted, — and having done so, find, according to Prof. Phillips, the rate of progressive change to be -fa for palaeozoic, jig for mesozoic, and -J for caenozoic time.% If the proportion thus given by Professor Phillips for caenozoic and palaeozoic time be anything like correct, or \ to T*g, we have, I submit, a strong confirmation of the truth of the * See Geological Diagram. I Professor PHiLLirs, in " Quarterly Journ Geol. Soc.," vol. xvi. part 2, p. 1. (May, I860.) 12 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. general principles of my theory. As to the uniformity of fauna in ancient times, every one knows how complete that was. The same fossils in the older rocks indicate with perfect certainty each for mation in whatever quarter of the globe it may be ; and the great breaks or commencement of a new phase of life at the end of the palaeozoic and mesozoic epochs may be due to some cosmical change having taken place, affecting the conditions of life over the whole globe, at these dates. Dr. Babbage's machine furnishes an illustration of the mode in which Nature's action may perhaps be regulated in thus developing species. Dr. Babbage, as all the world knows, has invented a calculating and an analytical machine. The first is merely a machine for arithmetical calculation, the latter is a contrivance of a much higher and more difficult character. It not only does the arithmetical calculations, but changes the formulae where it is necessary to do so in order to work out the result, and goes through the operation of equation. This machine can put upon paper a series of terms or arithmetical numbers of any kind whatever, following any desired law. If, for example, an order is given to it to make the series of the natural numbers, 12 3 4, &c., and this order alone is given, it will go on producing the series of natural numbers, without variation, until the machine is worn out, or the motive power ceases. The parallel to this in our subject would be a law in nature providing for the continuance of species by generation, but providing for no develop ment of any new form. But at the original setting of the machine an order might have been given to it to violate the above law, and at some term millions upon millions of times distant, to substitute a different number following some other law, and this new law might have been directed to be observed for one turn of the machine, or for any number of turns, and then that the original law should be restored for the future. This would not exactly be the parallel to the law ordaining the development of new species on the occurrence of any change in condition. It is only a parallel to one producing a new form or species at some certain time, and that time, fixed and independent of the occurrence or concurrence of circumstances. The parallel, to be complete, would require that the new law should not take place at a fixed predetermined time, but be dependent on circumstances, or a circumstance (as, for example, the occurrence in plants or animals of some change, in the physical condition of themselves or their place of abode.) Not being quite satisfied, therefore, with the parallel so far as I could work it out from the account of Dr. Babbage's machine given in any books about it to which I had access, I had recourse to the Doctor himself — to whom I owe many acknowledgments for his kindness and patience with my dullness — and asked him the question whether he could so set the machine that it should go on pro ducing a series of numbers until a certain concurrence of circumstances should take place, the time when such concurrence would or could take place not being known to him, and that then, and not until then, the alteration on the law should take place. The Doctor thought for a moment and then replied, " Certainly I can. I can give the machine an order to go on producing a series of numbers until the last, and the third last, and the fifth last, or any other combination, shall all be the same figure, or shall be some combination of figures — all threes, for example, or all fives, or two fours and one five, and then the new law shall come into operation. I cannot tell, when that may happen, and do not know whether it may ever happen, but whenever it does happen, be it soon or be it late, the new law will immediately come into operation." That is the parallel to our case, and I use it for the purpose of making more plain to the reader the form in which the subject of which I have been speaking presents itself to my mind. SPECIFIC CENTRES. 13 The adaptation of speoies to the conditions in which they are to pass their lives, as of tree kangaroos to a life in trees, or blind animals to a life in darkness, is, I think, a phenomenon of a different nature, and regulated by other laws, the working or nature of which does not come within the scope of this inquiry. I offer no opinion here upon that subject. Only of one thing I may say, I feel as sure as I can be of anything which I do not know, and that is, that it is not by the process supposed by Mr. Darwin, viz., by Nature trying an infinity of experiments and rejecting them all until she hit upon the right one. Nature never makes chips. When the occasion for a tree kangaroo arose, we may be sure that the tree kangaroo appeared perfect . at the first attempt. There was no failure of myriads of forms of kangaroos in other directions created or developed but to die, until by chance one in this direction appeared. That I feel, but I cannot prove it ; it is only my feeling, and therefore of no use to any one but myself. Of course, in adopting the view which I have above explained, I abandon, to a certain extent, the theory of specific centres of creation ; and I adopt, to a like extent, the theory of a multiple origin of species. But neither unconditionally. I abandon the idea of specific centres of creation only so far as that implies that the original centre was confined to one or two single progenitors. My centre is the whole species ; — from the region where it received the impress of its character, it may spread in all directions, continuing unchanged wherever it feels no important change in its con ditions of life ; becoming changed into another species or variety when a change on them makes itself felt. In like manner my multiple origin of species is not that of Agassiz, who imagined the same species to be produced separately and independently of each other in many different places without communication, as, for example, the same species of fish to be produced in three different rivers between which there were no means of communication.* * I hope that I have correctly interpreted Agassi z's views ; I have taken them from the following quotation from his paper on the subject in the " Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal:" " Let us compare the different species which occur in the Danube, in the Rhine, and the Rhone, three hydro- graphic basins entirely unconnected with each other throughout their whole extent. They spring from the same mountain chain, as we may take the Inn as the source of the Danube. These three great rivers take their rise within a few miles of each other. Nevertheless, most of their fishes differ ; but there are some which are common to the three. *** If these animals had not originated in these rivers separately, why should not such closely-allied species — some of which occur in the three basins — have all spread equally into them ; and if they originated in the separate basins, we have, within close limits, a multiple origin of the same species ; and that this multiple origin must be admitted as a fact, is shown by the following further evidence. Among the carps we find, for instance, Barbus, Gobio, Carpio, common to the three ; but the Danube has three Gobios, whilst the others have but one — one of the Danube being identical with the one of the other two rivers. The most striking fact, however, occurs in the genus Lecciscus. L. dobula is common to the three ; but in addition to it the Danube has second species, which occur neither in the Danube nor in the Rhine ; and in the Rhine there are species which be long neither to the Rhone nor to the Danube. Now we ask, could all these species of Leuciscus have been created in one of the basins in the Danube, for instance, and have migrated in such a way that a certain number of the species should remain solely in the Danube, while some others left the Danube altogether to settle finally only in the Rhone, and others to settle only in the Rhine ; that one accompanying those species peculiar to the Rhone remained in the Danube with those species peculiar to it, and settled also in the Rhine with those species peculiar to that river ; and also in the Rhine, with the species peculiar to the Rhine. And whether we assume the Rhone as the primitive centre, instead of the Danube or the Rhine, the argument holds equally good. We have one species common to the three rivers, and several spe cies peculiar to each which could never have migrated (if migration took place) in such a manner as to assume this present combination. But if, on the contrary, we suppose that all the species originated in the rivers where they occur, then we have again a multiple origin of that species which is common to the three, for it were wonderful if that one alone had migrated when they were all so closely allied." — Agassiz, in "Edin. New Phil. Journ." vol. xlix. p. 12. 14 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. To my multiple origin, communication and direct derivation is essential. The species is com pounded of many influences brought together through many individuals, and distilled by Nature into one species ; and, being once established, it may roam and spread wherever it finds the conditions of life not materially different from those of its original centre. I may add that I do not imagine that time has anything to do with the change or creation of species, further than as it gives greater opportunity for the occurrence of change. Species may vibrate backwards and forwards between two differently situated districts in the same country, and at each vibration give off new forms, while the portion of the old which have not moved still sub sist, and the longer time there is for this to go on of course the greater number of species will the country contain. It is thus not solely because Africa is a tropical, and in many parts a productive land, that the number of its species is great, nor is the paucity of species in Siberia wholly due to the ungenial nature of its soil and climate. The one owes its preponderance over the other also partly to the comparatively long period which has elapsed since it became dry land, and the other its deficiency partly to the short time which has elapsed since it emerged from below the waters. For practical purposes, however, my opinion regarding the origin of species merely requires the coincident pre-existence in time and place of some other species from which it may have been derived ; it may have been derived, as I suppose, through the effect of change letting loose an innate power of variation, or, as Mr. Darwin supposes, by selection. It may have been by descent from one individual in whom the change has been effected, or, as I now believe, by the impress of change being extended over all the individuals similarly situated. I am not greatly concerned to explain - the exact mode of operation of the laws evolving new species. What I cannot do without, however, is the assumption that there is some law having such effect, and that de scent is the only possible explanation of relationship and distribution. 15 CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES, Continued MODES OF DISPERSAL OF SPECIES. The mode In which, and the extent to which, species become dispersed, is another point which must be settled at starting. The principal question on which a difference of opinion exists is the value to be attached to accidental or occasional dispersal as a means of distribution. Taking for example the case of Oceanic Islands, there are two ways in which their faunas and floras may be accounted for. One — that advocated by the late Professor Edward Forbes — by supposing that at some period, more or less distant, the islands had been united to the nearest land, to whose faunas and floras their own was most akin. The other, which is that adopted by Mr. Darwin for most of the cases which occur, that they had been colonized by chance visitants, or what may be called the flotsam and jetsam of the ocean. For the purpose of testing the feasibility of his hypothesis, Mr. Darwin tried many ingenious experiments as to the length of time for which seeds can float in the sea without losing their vitality. He reckoned how fast currents carry them on their way. He also showed the many different means by which they may be transported — as in earth about the roots of drift timber, or adhering to the beaks or claws of birds, by icebergs, and by means even of fresh-water fish swallowing seeds, and then being themselves swallowed by birds of prey. Edmund Burke objected to the instances of some of his political opponents, that "their examples for common cases were all taken from the exceptions of most urgent necessity." The same objection applies to Mr. Darwin's illustrations. It is not to be denied that they are all possible, but they are also all of an exceptional nature, and some of them very improbable, as, for example, . the transport of seeds by means of icebergs, or by birds of prey swallowing the stomachs of vegetable-feeding fish. Where the icebergs leave their parent glacier there are few seeds of any kind, and fewer still that would suit the climate of milder regions. As to the birds of prey, their digestion is so notoriously rapid, that unless the bird set off express immediately after its meal, and the islands were not far off, there would be small chance of anything it had swallowed ever reaching their shores. The reader will remember numerous other instances of the actual diffusion of plants and animals in a similar way given by Sir C. Lyell ; * and Mr. Darwin, while he adds a few others, has no doubt a multitude more in his armoury. Notwithstanding this, I can come to no other conclusion than that colonization or occasional dispersal is insufficient to account for the character of the faunas and floras of Oceanic Islands ; and I believe that the normal mode in which islands have been peopled, has been by direct continuity with the land at some former period, or by contiguity so close as to be equivalent to junction ; and that the exceptions to this, such as St. Helena, have been excessively rare. That a slight intermixture due to Mr. Darwin's * Lykll, " Principles of Geology." 1st Edition. Vol. II. p. 1G, and seq. 1832. 16 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. colonization occurs in many (probably in all) I am ready to admit ; and from instances to bo afterwards noticed, I am disposed to reckon the proportions of such intermixtures in the flora, in the most favourable circumstances, at not more than two per cent. In the fauna I think it must be much As the question is a most important one in relation to geographical distribution, and Mr. Darwin's view strikes at the root of a great portion of the propositions which I shall have to submit to the reader in this work, I must consider his arguments in some detail. " Edward Forbes (says he) insisted that all the islands in the Atlantic must recently have been connected with Europe or Africa, and Europe likewise with America. Other authors have thus hypo- thetically bridged over every ocean, and have united almost every island to some mainland. If, indeed, the arguments used by Forbes are to be trusted, it must be admitted that scarcely a single island exists which has not recently been united to some continent. This view cuts the Gordian knot of the dispersal of the same species to the most distant points, and removes many a difficulty. But to the best of my judgment we are not authorized in admitting such enormous geographical changes within the period of existing species. It seems to me that we have abundant evidence of great oscil lations of level in our continents, but not of such vast changes in their position and extension as to have united them within the recent period to each other, and to the several intervening Oceanic Islands. I freely admit the former existence of many islands now buried beneath the sea, which may have served as halting-places for plants, and for many animals during their migration. In the coral- producing oceans such sunken islands are now marked by rings of coral or atolls standing over them. Whenever it is fully admitted, as I believe it will some day be, that each species has proceeded from a single birth-place, and when, in the course of time, we know something definite about the means of distribution, we shall be enabled to speculate with security on the former extension of the land. But I do not believe tnat it will ever be proved that within the recent period continents which are now quite separate have been continuously, or almost continuously, united with each other, and with the many existing Oceanic Islands. Several facts in distribution — such as the great difference in the marine Faunas on the opposite side of almost every continent — the close relation of the tertiary inhabitants of several lands, and even seas, to their present inhabitants — a certain degree of relation (as we shall hereafter see) between the distribution of mammals and the depth of the sea — these, and other such facts, seem to me opposed to the admission of such prodigious geological revolutions within the recent period as are necessitated on the view advanced by Forbes, and admitted by his many followers. The nature and relative proportions of the inhabitants of Oceanic Islands likewise seem to me opposed to the belief of their former continuity with continents." And in another place he thus sums up : " All the foregoing remarks on the inhabitants of Oceanic Islands — namely, the scarcity of kinds, — the richness in endemic forms in particular classes, or sections of classes, — the absence of whole groups, as of batra- chians and of terrestrial mammals, notwithstanding the presence of aerial bats, — the singular proportions of certain orders of plants, herbaceous forms having been developed into trees, &c. — seem to me to accord better with the view of occasional means of transport having been largely efficient in the long course of time, than with the view of all our Oceanic Islands having been formerly connected by con tinuous land with the nearest continent : for, on this latter view, the migration would probably have been more complete : and if modification be admitted, all the forms of life would have been more equally modified, in accordance with the paramount importance of the relation of organism to organism."* * Darwin, op. cit. p. 427. DISPERSAL OF SPECIES. 17 One of the great delights in dealing with Mr. Darwin is the perfect fairness with which he states every point connected with his case. The unconscious bias, from which few men escape, seems to be wanting in his constitution. He alwaj's tells the facts which make against him as fully and fairly as those which are in his favour. And while we may feel unable at the moment to make head against the current of ingenious suggestions, illustrations, and possibilities, with which he hurries us along, he always gives us the real facts to anchor by, so that we can, when we think proper, pull up and form our own judgment. Now, on this topic he has given us some remarkable instances opposed to his hypothesis. He mentions various islands only separated from others or the main land by a narrow channel where the species are wholly different. He refers to the Straits of Macassar as separating two widely distinct Mammalian Faunas. Such a separation was first sug gested by Miiller, and is laid down on his authority in Berghaus' "Physical Atlas."* He (Miiller) ran the line of division up the east side of Celebes, whereas Mr. Earl and Mr. Wallace (more particularly the latter) have since shown that it lies to the west of that island ; and instead of cutting the Island of Timor in two, as was supposed by Miiller to be the case, passes up the narrow straits (only a few miles wide), between the islands of Bali and Lombock. Mr. Wallace also notices that " Java possesses numerous birds which never pass over to Sumatra, though they are separated by a strait only fifteen miles wide, and with islands in mid-channel." f Of course this can only apply to non-migratorial birds, and I have already suggested a cause why even birds may often be kept within the limits of their original bounds. If they go beyond them in small numbers they die off. If they go and increase in numbers, the new conditions of life affect their constitution, set in action the principle of change, and they become transformed into new species. Again, Mr. Darwin says, in speaking of the Galapagos Archipelago, " The really surprising fact in this case, and in a lesser degree in some analogous instances, is that the new species formed in the separate islands have not quickly spread to the other islands. But the islands, though in sight of each other, are separated by deep arms of the sea, in most cases wider than the British Channel ; and there is no reason to suppose that they have at any former period been continuously united J ... Many even of the birds, though so well adapted for flying from island to island, are distinct." At the Hawaian Islands each separate island has, in a general way, its own set of land shells. || At the Sandwich Islands the same thing occurs,§ and even the fishes of different islands are said by Agassiz to be distinct from each other.^f Other instances might be given of islands which are favourably situated for receiving immigrants, being inhabited by plants and animals different from those of the neighbouring coasts, although still bearing the far-off impress of a common origin. But no stronger instance of the power of a small barrier in retaining species could be cited than that of the straits between the Continent and our own island. The faunas and floras both of * Berghaus, " Physikalischen Atlas." 1845. endemic peculiarity of the species of each individual island t Wallace, on " The Physical Geography of the Malay tells of subsequent separation and change wrought in each Archipelago," in Proceedings of Royal Geographical Society, probably at the same time, by the alteration of climate June, 1863. (Separate copy, p. 12.) from continental or terrestrial, to isolated and oceanic. J The character and the species of the different islands § Dr. Pickering, in " Proceedings of American Aca- would lead me to a different conclusion. The American demy of Arts and Sciences," vol. iv. p. 193. I860, type of the whole group speaks primarily of connexion || Dr. A. A. Gould, in " Proceed. Amer. Acad. Arts with the continent. The family facies of the group inler and Sciences," vol. iv. p. 19'). 1860. se, speaks of a period when the whole islands were so- IT Prof. Agassiz, in " Proceed. Amer. Acad. Arts aud parated from America, but united to each other. The Sciences," vol. iv. p. 195. I860. T) 18 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. it and of the neighbouring continent have been now for a considerable time minutely known ; and although all the species in Britain are also found on the Continent, there are many species in the latter which are not found in Britain. The length of time for which authentic data have existed is no doubt but a brief moment compared to the lapse of ages which Mr. Darwin requires for his colonization ; but the thousand facilities for introduction which are daily furnished by the constant intercourse between England and the Continent may be allowed in some respect to compensate for the briefness of our chronicle, and we may fairly argue from what has taken place during that time as if it represented a much longer period. And what does it show ? Putting aside the introduction of plants brought by commerce or in ballast, and which almost invariably disappear in the course of a few years, how few colonists can Britain claim from the Continent during the past century. More than that, the difficulty which a colony (much more a single colonist) must encounter in establishing itself on a foreign shore may be estimated from the fact that any attempts which have been made to introduce and naturalize species from the other side of the Channel, have always failed. The difficulty which we experience whenever we attempt to transport animals from more distant lands into other countries, even if we secure for them as nearly as can be the same conditions as those in which they used to live, is another instance of the same kind. The same thing may be observed everywhere. Sir Charles Lyell says of America, " Many European plants are making their way here, such as the wild camomile and the thorn apple (Datura Stramonium) ; and it is a curious fact, which I afterwards learned from Dr. Dale Owen, that when such foreigners are first naturalised they overrun the country with amazing rapidity and are quite a nuisance. But they soon grow scarce, and after eight or ten years can hardly be met with."* The overrunning phase seems to be the stage to which New Zealand has arrived at the present time ; an immense irruption of European weeds has been made in these islands, and it will doubtless disappear there in a few years, as has been the case in America. But much less important obstacles than straits or passages of the sea act as effectual barriers against distribution. Rivers also sometimes form effective barriers, although I believe that in most instances where they so act the phenomenon has been originally occasioned by a former different arrangement of land and sea, and the obstacle then occasioned by a strait or sea been kept up by the river now flowing in their course. This I believe to be the case with the Amazon and Orinoko, which furnish many instances in point ; for example, Mr. Wallace mentions that " on the north side of the Amazon, and east of the Rio Negro, are found the following three species of monkeys : — Ateles paniscus, Brachyurus Satanas, and Jacchus bicolor. These are all found close up to the margins of the Rio Negro and Amazon, but never on the opposite banks of either river." Again, a species of Pithecia is found on the west side of the Rio Negro for several hundred miles from its mouth up to the River Curicuriari, but never on the east side ; neither is it known on the south side of the Upper Amazon, where it is replaced by an allied species, the P. irrorata (P. hirsuta Spix.), which, though abundant there, is never found on the north bank. He mentions, also, that on the south side of the Lower Amazon, in the neighbourhood of Para, are found two monkeys, Mycetes Beelzebub and Jacchus tamarin, which do not pass the river to the north. Mr. Bates bears similar testimony. He informs me that it is the universal and spontaneous * Ltell's " Second Visit to the United States," ii. 270, 1850. DISPERSAL OF SPECIES. 19 statement of native hunters, that the river does limit ranges, and out of many other instances gives the case of two remarkable species of monkey, Brachyurus c.vlvus and B. rubicundtts, which are found abundantly in Ygapo Forest, north of the Upper Amazons west of Japura, and although there are hundreds of miles of the same sort of forest on the south bank, no instance is known of either of these monkeys having been seen there. Mr. Darwin mentions that the Bizcacha has never been seen to the eastward of the River Uruguay. "Yet in this province there are plains which appear admirably adapted to its habits. The Uruguay has formed an insuperable obstacle to its migration, although the broad barrier of the Parana has been passed, and the Bizcacha is common in Entre Rios, the provinco between these great rivers."* Even birds are subject to the same law, although it cannot be expected that rivers should often limit their ranges. Mr. Wallace mentions several instances, some of which, as the birds are of a kind whose flight is short, are not so remarkable, but others are not open to that objection ; for example, — " The fine blue Macaw (Macrocercus Maximilianus) inhabits the borders of the hilly country south of the Amazon, from the sea-coast probably up to the Madera. Below Santarem it is sometimes found close up to the banks of the Amazon, but is said never to cross that river. Its head-quarters are the upper waters of the Tocantins Xingu and Tapagoz rivers. " Another instance of a bird not crossing the Amazon is the beautiful Curl-crested Aracari (Ptero- glossus Beauharnasii), which is found on the south side of the Upper Amazon, opposite the Rio Negro, and at Coari and Ega, but has never been seen on the north side. The green Jacamar of Guiana, also (Galbula viridis), occurs all along the north bank of the Amazon, but is not found on the south, where it is replaced by the G. cyanocollis and G. maculicauda, both of which occur in the neighbourhood of Para." f Other facts to the same effect are mentioned by Mr. Wallace and Mr. Bates regarding insects and the lower animals. Similar instances can be given from the Niger, the Lena, and other great rivers. But enough has been said to show that the fact is not exceptional. These are cases showing that under the most favourable and inviting circumstances, colonization, immigration, or occasional visitation, has not taken place. If it has failed in these, with what logic can we be asked to admit its being the rule under less favoured circumstances ? In like manner mountains, deserts, woods, and plains, all act as barriers of separation or bridges of communication, according as they are fitted or not for the occupancy of the animal. On the other hand, where the sea between neighbouring lands is bridged over in winter by ice, it often, although not always, ceases to be a barrier. In Captain M'Clintock's journal, various incidental notices occur, showing that a general migration of the polar animals over the ice takes place on the breaking up of winter.J * Darwin, "Journal of Researches." Second edition, be some land in the north-east or east. May 9th. — 1845, p. 124. Delightful weather; tufts of moss and the tops of t Wallace, Alfred, " Narrative of Travels on the Ama- stones are gradually peeping up through the snow, and zon and Rio Negro." London, 1853. animals begin to appear. I picked up two catcrpil- X The following are examples of this. "April 21st, lars to-day. Fox-tracks are very numerous; the ma- temperature 8°. Whilst crossing a bay, and about a jority of these tracks are crossing to the north-westward, mile off the land, we passed four separate tracks of probably following the ptarmigan. Lemmings are abun- lemmings, travelling in for the land. If these little crea- dant, and these wonderful little creatures, which consti- turcs are migrating across the ice, there would seem to tutc the chief support of foxes, ravens, wolves, owls, and 20 l'RELIMINARY INQUIRIES. Still on the whole, I agree with those who think that the effect of harriers in preventing the spread of species has been undervalued, and that a much slighter obstacle than is generally supposed to be necessary, is sufficient to preserve neighbouring faunas from intermixture. The above are negative arguments against the peopling of oceanic islands by occasional visitants. Tho reasons in favour of this having been effected through former continuity of land are more po sitive. One of these is the nature of the affinity which can be traced between the inhabitants of such islands and of the main coast. It is not a near affinity, but faint and far off; and this is just what we should expect. If the island were formerly united to the mainland, it must have started with the same inhabitants as it, and under the influence of the change which must have occurred in the conditions or climate of both or either through isolation, they must have gradually diverged from each other by the successive development of new species. Their affinity is still indisputable, although it has gradually become distant, and in the case of the island (which has had its oppor tunities of communication with the outer world very much restricted) peculiar and endemic, while the mainland, not so restricted, is more expanded in its character. If, on the other hand, the island had derived its inhabitants from colonization, they must necessarily be more recent than the separa tion, and the immigration must have gone on continuously through all succeeding times, so that instead of our finding a homogeneous endemic fauna and flora, we should have contributions of all dates, and from various countries ; for it is to be remembered that currents and winds may, nay must, have sometimes changed, in consequence of alterations on the relative distribution of land and water, in the course of uncounted ages ; and instead of having everything from the nearest land we might have a morsel from one country and a morsel from another, as we certainly should have fragments of all ages down to the most recent — a state of matters essentially inconsistent both with the reality, and with what is understood by the term endemic. The richness of oceanic islands in endemic forms, therefore, seems a strong argument in favour of Forbes' view and against Mr. Darwin's. It seems to be as necessary a result of isolation, as restricted and confined (what may be called endemic) views used to be of the country life of the untravelled Thane. When Mr. Darwin says, that had the forms of life been derived as supposed by Forbes, they would all " have been more equally modified in accordance with the paramount import ance of the relation of organism to organism," I am not sure that I understand him. He cannot mean that some paramount influence modifies the development of new species and forms into certain relations with each other ? for that would be nearly equivalent to the old theory of the forms of life being dependent on the physical conditions under which they are produced — a theory which is repugnant to the whole spirit of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis ; and is repudiated by himself as " a deeply-seated error." It may be so. Still I have a strong suspicion that we are in the infancy of our knowledge of physical conditions, and how they operate.* The whole length which I have yet gone in ascribing effect to physical condition is to attribute some influence to the mere fact of exposure to a change in condition. It stimulates or sets a even every species of gull, are as active tourists as the less than to the abundant exercise and unloaded mind, larger animals, crossing these wide straits in all directions." that ho owes the draughts of health which he drinks in — See Captain M'ClintocL's Diary in Proc. Dublin Nat. when striding over our Highland muirs, or pacing along Hist. Univ. Assoc, in N.it. Hist. Rev. April, 1856, p. 40. our salt sea beaches. The " change of air," constantly * If the reader will refer to his own sensations, I think recommended by physicians, is nothing but a change of he will admit that, although these conditions are very physical condition : and shall we be told that this has no subtle, they are also very powerful. It is to them, not influence on the animal frame 1 DISPERSAL OF SPECIES. 21 ■working the organic impulses which produce organic changes. It is, I imagine, analogous to the physiological phenomena which occur in our own bodies in health and sickness, especially as seen in the weak and aged. So long as we go on in our regular daily course of life, we enjoy our usual health. Some trifle occurs to disturb this regularity. We say we are upset by it. We are jolted off the rail ; the doctor tries to get us back into the old track, but the impulse of change has been set a going, and the system instead of returning into its old groove sets off in a different direction, vires acquirit eundo, and when he asks for us to-morrow we are grave men. It may be that particular conditions produce particular effects, as darkness, absence of eyes ; but the subject is one on which we are in darkness and unable to see. No matter what the nature of the physical condition may be, if Dr. Forschammer is correct in allotting distinct physical properties to six teen different regions of the ocean, it is not improbable that material differences may exist without our being able to detect them. Mr. Darwin relies on other facts characteristic of oceanic islands, more especially of those which have subsided. These facts all fall under the same category, and involve the same principle. They are: — The nature and relative proportion of inhabitants in oceanic islands; the existence of some families to the exclusion of others (bats to the exclusion of batrachians and terrestrial mammals, &c.) ; the scarcity of kinds of animals generally ; and the preponderance of arboreal over herbaceous forms of plants.* Now, if we think for a moment of the course of events which must necessarily have taken place on the subsidence of the land of which these islands formed part, there seems nothing in the above facts to justify the idea of colonization, or inconsistent with that of former continuity. The reader will find the probable course of events following upon subsidence speculated on a little more in detail in a subsequent chapter on the Distribution of Man. Here it will be sufficient to say, that as the land became submerged, such animals as existed would for the most part be drowned or starved, unless where they betook themselves to the highest peaks, which remained longest above the waves. If man or carnivorous animals were amongst them, their extinction would only be the more rapid. If none but herbivorous animals took refuge there, the food would be insufficient for numbers, and they would drop off by inanition. It seems also very doubtful whether the peaks which we now see in the centre of the atolls, were in existence when the spot on which they stand was first submerged. They are all of volcanic origin, and may have arisen after the land was drowned. The coral atolls may havo originally started from slight elevations on the surface of a flat continent, and man may have been able to maintain his place on these half-dry reefs, which terrestrial animals — excepting always bats and birds — could not. Under such circumstances it is obvious that it would be an inexplicable anomaly were we to find no " scarcity of animals generally." It is equally obvious that all other animals which could neither fly nor swim must be absent. And, as is remarked by Mr. Darwin himself, batrachia must follow in the same category, for they cannot live or propagate in salt water. Therefore their fate would be as much sealed as that of any other class of animals. Mr. Darwin claims the bats as specially supporting his view. He says, " No terrestrial mammal can bo transported across a wide space of sea, but bats can fly across." But they at least are the mammals most fitted for preserving their lives so long as any resting-place at all remained. The presence of land-shells on these islands is acknowledged by Mr. Darwin as a special difficulty in his view of the case, as they can neither fly nor swim across a part of the ocean, and neither they nor their eggs can live in salt * Darwin, op. cit. p. 427. 22 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. water; — according to Forbes' theory their presence offers no difficulty at all, so long as any portion of the land remained above the water. The preponderance of arboreal over herbaceous vegetation again, is a peculiarity shared by other lands which are not oceanic — North America, Japan, Hong Kong. But I am ready to admit that the dissemination of such plants may have been to a certain extent due to accidental or occasional dispersion, in which, however, man was probably the chief agent. I do not so much dispute the fact of occasional colonization having taken place (especially among plants), as I object to the attempt to refer everything to that cause. If I am correct in holding that the transformation of old species into new is usually (if not always) effected through the medium of large numbers of individuals, chance colonists, being of course solitary or few in number, would not undergo this change until their numbers had suffi ciently multiplied. I would, therefore, infer wherever individuals belonging to the same identical species occur in different lands (always excepting polar districts and those where the physical condition is uniform), that their presence is probably due to colonization; and where the species are representative that there is a presumption that the land in which they occur must at some former period have been connected with that of the typical species. 23 CHAPTER III. GEOGRAPHY OF THE GLOBE SINCE THE SECONDARY EPOCH SUBSIDENCE IN SOUTHERN AND ELEVATION IN NORTHERN HEMISPHERE CORAL REEFS BANDS OF ELEVATION AND DEPRESSION. It will save the reader as well as myself much subsequent digression if I lay before him at the outset a general view of what I conceive to have been the past geography of the globe during the successive epochs which have elapsed since mammals first appeared, or rather, were first established — in other words, since the close of the secondary epoch. My theory, that change in the forms of organic life is the result of alteration on the physical conditions of the earth, requires that some important change on the condition of the globe should have occurred at the close of the secondary and commencement of the tertiary epoch ; for at that time there was a great start given to the development of species, and new forms and new types came then into being. What the change consisted in we do not know ; but it may have been some great change in the relative proportions of land and water : a change from a world almost covered with water to one with less sea and more dry land. The fact that no remains of land-animals have been found during the cretaceous epoch, and very few of terrestrial plants, while soon afterwards they become plentiful, suggests the possibility of this having been the nature of the change. Whatever it was, however, the fact seems certain that a great change did then occur, and, inter alia, that terrestrial life for the first time assumed an important place among created beings. The first stage was the eocene epoch. Remains of this period occur in Europe, Asia, and America ; also in North Africa ; but none have been found in Africa south of the Sahara, nor in Australia. Of Australia, Mr. Jukes says, " Above the palaeozoic series there is an absolute gap, a total deficiency of all other stratified rocks whatsoever, so far as is at present known, except those be longing to a tertiary formation which, from the very recent aspect of its fossils and their resem blance to existing forms I believe to be a very modern one."* Some of the views entertained at the time Mr. Jukes wrote have since been modified, but it remains uncontroverted that a portion of Australia was above the sea in the secondary and eocene epochs, and has continued always above it until now. As the characters of the early eocene flora and fauna of Europe bear great resemblance to those still existing in Australia, geologists have concluded that these two countries were formerly in some way united, and that a continuous stretch of dry land existed between them. It has been supposed that never having since been wholly submerged, Australia hud preserved the general type of this eocene life down to the present day ; and although Professor M'Coy has latterly taken exception to the correctness of this in its full extent, the comparative lists of plants found in the eocene deposits of Europe contrasted with those now living in Australia, given by * Jukes, "Sketch of the Physical Structure of Australia," London, 1850, p. 89. 24 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. Professor Unger in his " New Holland in Europe,"* puts it wholly beyond dispute. He has there enumerated 173 plants discovered in the eocene beds of Europe analogous to species now living in New Holland or in the southern hemisphere. In his interesting paper on this subject, Professor Unger also points out that the representatives of a certain proportion of the eocene plants are now found in China and other parts of Asia, and the analogues of a third portion in North America. He might have added that another proportion occurs in the Indo- Malayan region, for Mr. Bowerbank has described no fewer than thirteen fruits of palms from the eocene beds in the Island of Sheppy, all of the recent type, now found only in India, and in the Moluccas and Philippine Islands. The conclusion to which Professor Unger arrives from these premises is that Europe was not a centre of creation, but that it received the impress of the peculiarities of three continents ; and he supposes that it did so by means of a land communication existing between Australia and Europe, through Asia, by way of the Moluccas, and by one from America across the Atlantic. Of course, it is part of his hypothesis that at that time the climate of all these countries was the same. Professor Unger's explanation is open to the objection that he assumes, without the smallest warrant, that the floras of Australia, of Asia, and of America, were each of the same character in the eocene epoch as they are now. Europe is the only country with whose flora in the eocene epoch we are at all acquainted. With that of Australia we shall probably never be acquainted, because it apparently has no eocene formations. The eocene fossils hitherto found in America are extensive, but entirely marine, and consequently our knowledge of the fossil flora of that epoch there, is nil, and we know as little of the eocene flora of Asia. The character, therefore, of the existing vegetation in the only country (Europe) with whose flora during the eocene epoch we are acquainted, is different from that which then grew in it, and therefore, so far as we can draw any conclusions from that solitary fact, they should certainly not be that the eocene flora of all the other countries was the same as their existing flora. There arc grounds for making an exception in favour of Australia whose present flora is so largely analogous to the European eocene flora. The very extent of the analogy is in itself an argu ment for doing so, but there are no grounds for supposing this either for America or Asia, of whose elements only a small proportion appears in the eocene flora of Europe. The more generally adopted view accords better with facts, viz. that (whether as a consequence of the more uniform heat which then extended over the whole globe or not) organic life during the secondary and eocene epoch was more homogeneous than it became afterwards, or is now. The elements out of which the American, Asiatic, Indo-Malayan, and Australian floras have sprung, were doubtless intermingled then not only in Europe, but in America, in Asia, in the Tropics, and Australia ; but since then, through the changes arising from altered conditions of life, the uniformity has been broken up, and the present distribution of species established. There can be no doubt that land communication between Australia must then have existed, and the route suggested by Professor Unger seems as likely as any other. At the same time, it must be remembered that the present arrangement of the flora or fauna of any part of the northern hemisphere is not the slightest criterion of what it was in the eocene epoch, because the whole of the old relations of species there must have been completely overturned by the clearance of life which the glacial epoch brought about. * Unger, Dr. F. " Ncu Holland in Europa," and Translation in Seeman's " Journal of Botany," Feb. 1865, p. 39. SUBMERGENCES. 25 The progress of life during the eocene epoch seems to have experienced no sudden or material change. Mammalian life went on gradually from the Marsupials to the Palaeotheroid animals, and onwards to the ruminants ; and the flora passed from the Australian to the miocene, or North American type. These changes were apparently brought about by gradual mutation in the arrange ment and distribution of land and water, possibly a gradual reduction in the temperature of the globe ; but no violent or abrupt alteration of any kind seems to have occurred. So far as we can trace these new modifications in the distribution of land and water, the main feature seems to have been a transference of dry land from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere : that is, the submergence of land in the one, and its emergence in the other. Great alternations have taken place, and are constantly taking place in tbis respect, everywhere. What is now above water was formerly below it, and vice verad, and in each hemisphere there are portions intermixed with each other, the one of which is rising and the other sinking. And we can see that both operations are carried on at the same time, and that the one is usually in compensation of the other ; although both are intermingled, sometimes a general sinking with partial risings. The most important of such submergences seems to have been the subsidence of the vast space in the South Pacific Ocean, now beaconed by the Oceanic Coral Islets which are scattered through it, both east and west of the Indian Archipelago and Australia. It is now universally admitted that these coral islets are the relics of a submerged land which had formerly existed as a great continent ; and the relations of the faunas and floras of South America to New Zealand and Australia on the one hand, and to Africa on the other, as well as some relations between South- West Australia and South Africa, almost compel us to admit that as complete a circlet of land formerly crowned the southern temperate regions as now does the northern. The fact that these Oceanic Islets are vestiges of a great continent was first proved by Mr. Darwin. He showed that fringing reefs, — that is, reefs growing close to the land, — are an evidence that the land is either stationary or slowly rising, at least that the reefs have been formed when the land has been rising; that atolls and barrier reefs, that is, reefs not clinging to the shore, but separated from the land by a space of water, show that the land has been subsiding, or that a subsidence was taking place whilst they were formed ; and from this mute evidence he was enabled to compile the map of elevation and subsidence by which I have pro fited. To give the evidence in support of this, would be to repeat Mr. Darwin's beautiful train of reasoning on the subject in his " Journal of a Naturalist." The scientific reader is already familiar with it, and it would be injudicious kindness to attempt to save those who are not the plea sure of reading one of the most delightful works in the English language. His argument is chiefly, if not entirely, drawn from the coral reefs in these seas, and from the fact that while they are composed of coral, standing on foundations of great, generally, unfathomable depth, they are yet constructed by animals requiring a foundation to start from and that foundation not to be at a greater depth than twenty or thirty fathoms. The same fact carries the period of submergence back into the abyss of time, when the elevations in the other hemisphere took place, for it proves the slow rate and consequent long duration of the period during which the subsidence has been taking place. Unless the depression had been gradual, the coral architects would not have had time to build up their towers and buttresses as the land sank. No personal inspection is in our power here, but if we give the reins to our imagination and try to guess at the scene which would meet our eyes were a sudden uprising equal to the previous depression to take place we might find something like this to be the result. Such an 26 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. event would bring all the foundations of these reefs to the surface, each bearing its narrow, lofty, perpendicular-cliffed coral tower, circled with precipices such as it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive, whose height is not to be reckoned by feet, but by miles ; where the light of day would scarcely penetrate to the bottom of the deep channels between those which stood near each other ; and with the top of each, all on one level, like mighty shot-towers or bastilles. Each has no doubt been formed as the elevations on which they stand successively sank beneath the sea. Some, no doubt, may be founded on ordinary hills or even lofty mountains, when we should have, on a colossal scale, a curious resemblance to the round pillars or towers on hill-tops, with which it is the fashion of Englishmen in their different counties to preserve the memory of their great men. Some indeed have thought, that the atolls and reefs might be the indications of the highest peaks of ranges of mountains. But this idea seems inconsistent with their position as well as their composition. Their general distribution indicates rather the beaconing of each elevation, small or great, as it successively sunk beneath the level of the ocean. Mr. Darwin objects to the idea on the ground that oceanic islands, where rock is found, are almost universally composed of volcanic minerals. If they had originally existed as mountain ranges on the land, some at least of the islands would have been formed like other mountain summits of granite, metamorphic schists, old fossiliferous, or other such rocks, instead of consisting of mere piles of volcanic matter.* The irregular distribution of many of the atolls and reefs, moreover, is opposed to the idea of their being parts of mountain ranges, and the long lines of others may be better reconciled with barrier reefs along the lines of coast than chains of mountains, when the subsidence began. Every little eminence a few feet high would furnish as good a foundation and starting-point for the coral architects as the serrated peaks of the loftiest mountains. The facts proved by Mr. Darwin, however, all relate to the past. It is quite consistent with them that the subsidence which they prove may now have ceased, and that as contended for by M. de Eoohas, an elcvatory movement may have commenced. We know that there has been an eleva- tory movement subsequent to the depression, both on the shores of Africa and in India, and the Indian Archipelago. M. de Rochas maintains that no coral island can have been raised above the water by the agency to which their rise is usually ascribed, viz. by a deposit from the waves dash ing over the reef, and that the only means by which they can have appeared is by an upheaval, pushing them up from below. He has inspected coral islands in various parts of the globe, and finds the surface free from the attrition and fractures which ought to result from the throwing over them of pebbles and sand by the waves ; and he also finds the coral in many places where no upheaval has raised it above the surface, remaining in precisely the same position in which it was observed long ago, with no accumulation of debris at its surface. It does not concern us much to determine which is the true explanation. The fact of subsidences and elevations having taken place at certain places and in a certain order, is what we chiefly require to make sure of. We have no data to determine with anything like accuracy to what extent these subsidences have taken place. We cannot even tell in some which are believed to be rising, whether they have only just begun to do so, or if they have for a long time changed from subsidence to elevation. It would seem as if nothing could be easier than to do this, because the raised cliffs of coral along the sea-shore should speak for themselves. But Mr. Darwin has shown, that in the natural course of things it is not probable that coral reefs elevated by a gradual rise of the laud would often be * Darwin-s ;1 Origin of Species," 3rd edit., p. 388. GEOLOGICAL MUTATIONS. 27 preserved so as to prove that they ever existed. It is only so long as the coral is fresh that it is hard and impenetrable ; when raised above or below the proper depth which suits the par- ticular species, the coral polype dies, and if exposed to the air the coral rots, and if then exposed to the wash of the sea is swept away. He himself narrates his experience of the rotting of the coral, but on the other hand he also speaks of having heard of two coral islands which had been elevated thirty or forty feet above the sea and showed a face of perpendicular coral cliffs to the sea : these, however, had not been examined by any naturalist.* If I am not mistaken, objections have been taken by some authors to the hypothesis of a sub merged continent, on the ground that it might disturb the equilibrium of tho earth. There is no doubt that on this point the arrangements, instead of being of a compensatory nature, are directly the reverse. A mass of material like the mountain-ranges protruded to one side further from the fulcrum (the centre of the earth) than the rest of its crust, must have a tendency to make the earth lop-sided, and a depression on the opposite side di awing the weight nearer to the fulcrum, and thereby diminishing its force, instead of being a compensatory movement, would only add to the disturbance. It is for astronomers and physicists to determine whether there is anything in the objection. I may, however, remark, that the parts where there is the greatest subsidence may not be opposed to those where there is the greatest rise : that subsidence and elevation often take place side by side, and that the whole alteration on the equilibrium even at the greatest, is probably too trifling to have any effect on such a large body as the earth. As to the date when this continent or these continents existed, and when they became submerged, we have more than one indication which may assist us in coming to a conclusion. In the first place, it is a generally acknowledged principle that important geological revolutions are slow and deliberate, and extend over a long period of time ; that the crust of the earth is not perpetually bobbing up and down ; and that the oscillations which occur in every part of the globe are mere minor accidents, as it were incidental to the progress of the great movement, and not the great movement itself. They may be compared to the slightly tremulous movement of a man's hand when he heaves his food to head : the real movement is the raising of his hand ; its vibration is the incidental. One phase of these geological mutations is the alternation of bands of elevation and depression. It was, I think, Mr. Darwin who suggested this idea, and at any rate it was was his discoveries relating to the physical and geological history of coral reefs, which brought it into favour. It is matter of fact that the elevation and corresponding depression in the two bands generally lie along side of each other. The Andes of South America is a band of elevation; to the west of that range there is a depression of immense depth, almost without islands or reefs ; westward of that gulf there is a vast area of coral atolls and reefs, which, as a whole, have been, and perhaps still are, sinking, while through it extends a band of rising land, distinguished by numerous volcanoes. The North Atlantic is a band of depression, Europe a recent band of elevation. 'Where active vol canoes are in operation, the land is usually rising ; and these generally lie in bands which often end in reaching to the dignity of mountain chains. Such is the band which extends from the New Hebrides through New Guinea, Borneo, Java and Sumatra. It seems a necessary con sequence of the elevation of dry land in the northern hemisphere, that a corresponding de pression should have taken place somewhere else. The elevation of, at least, all the land which * Darwin's " Coral Formations." 28 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. is marked as tertiary in Map 3, and as seems more than probable of a great continent in the Atlantic, must have left a vacuity in the interior of the earth, and withdrawn a support from the crust which stretched over it. That crust is both solid and clastic, but we know, from what takes place on the withdrawal of props in coal-mines, that the strata forming it arc unable to support themselves by cohesion ; and it stands to reason, that the crust of the earth, although so much thicker than any strata existing above the beds of coal, being of correspondingly greater extent, will be as little able to do so. The greater thickness will be compensated by the greater extent without support. The supposed subsidence in the Pacific Ocean extends over thousands of miles, and an unsupported roof that would cohere for such an extent, must be made of other materials than those of any minerals or rocks yet known. The elevation of the land in the northern hemisphere must, therefore, have entailed a corresponding amount of subsidence elsewhere, and as there is no " elsewhere " under water of corresponding dimensions but the Southern hemisphere, it must have been in the Southern Seas that the subsidence took place. The elevation and subsidence being compensatory must have also been nearly simultaneous, not quite, indeed, for the elevation being the cause of the depression must have been first in order of time. The elevation we know has been subsequent to the commencement of the tertiary period. The depression therefore must have been a little nearer to our own time. The sinking of the bottom of the Southern Ocean has probably been in operation long before the present rising of the Javan band of volcanoes, and the latter belongs to a different chapter in its history, and is, perhaps, more of the nature of an episode than an integral part of one operation. The former may be a chapter nearly past, the latter the commencement of a new one. Applying this view to the occurrences since the eocene epoch, we have at least one great result, the subsidence of the Southern hemisphere, and the elevation of the Northern : perhaps accomplished by alternate elevation and depression of portions of each. If the depression in the south was, as I suppose, general over a considerable part of that hemisphere at one time, we may fix the date of the subsidence of a large part of it. The geology of South Africa and the zoology of Madagascar enable us to do this. Africa, south of the Sahara, has probably remained stationary since the secondary epoch, at least has not been submerged. "Judging from all the evidences as yet collected," says Sir Roderick Murchison,* " the interior of South Africa has remained in that condition " (ter restrial and lacustrine only) "since the period of the secondary rocks of geologists." A nar row belt of tertiary formations along the eastern coast, from the Cape to the Zambesi, and along the south-west coast near Cape Negro, alone attests a trifling rise and extension of surface ; Sir Roderick adds, "In truth, therefore, the inner portion of Southern Africa is in this respect geologically unique in the long conservation of ancient terrestrial conditions. This inference is further supported by the concomitant absence throughout the larger portion of all this vast area, »-. e. south of the equator, of any of those volcanic rocks which are so often associated with oscillations of the terra firma." To this continent Madagascar was at one time united, when it received the original elements of its fauna and flora. These are of a type subsequent to the eocene date, and akin to modern species. Before the separation, therefore, the mioccne epoch must have commenced. How was the separation caused? Most probably not by the sinking of the channel between them, but by the general * See his opening address to the Geographical Society in 1864. i7o ieo tso 140 130 no no ioo 90 0 SO 40 30 zo 10 - 10 ZO 30 40 SO 60 70 SO HO 100 IJO 120 ISO 140 ISO W /70 iR H 0 E 60 W .VI 40 SO tif 70 SO 30 tOO 110 110 OO 140 ISO 100 HO Pn-S-.foo 'ImiTKdiJia GEOLOGICAL MUTATIONS. 29 sinking of all around. The fringe of tertiary beds on the opposite coast of Africa must have been deposited subsequently to the submergence, and, therefore, the coast of South Africa (and as the fringe extends on both east and west shores, the whole of South Africa, and Madagascar with it) must have suffered, first, a depression sufficient to allow of these tertiary beds being deposited, and then a subsequent elevation so as to bring these beds to view. These tertiaries are referred to the upper miocene epoch ; the subsidence, therefore, must have taken place not later than the middle of that epoch. The extent of land then submerged, we cannot specify ; but we may safely infer that a great con tinent stretched across between Africa and India. The numerous shoals in the Indian Ocean is one indication of this, but a much more important one is the fact of the fauna of India and Africa, belonging, with few exceptions, to the same families, and these families which are peculiar to those two districts. So far as regards Mammals, abundant illustrations in support of this will be found throughout the following pages, passim. This Africano-Indian continent was bounded on the north by the Saharan Sea, and by the sea which appears from the nummulitic eocene beds in Arabia, Persia, Beloochistan, and more modern tertiaries in the north of India, to have then covered these countries. On still stronger grounds the existence of a large tract of land, where the North Atlantic now rolls, has been inferred. This is what is known as the Miocene Atlantis. :;0 CHAPTER IV. PAST GEOGRAPHY OF THE GLOBE continued — MIOCENE ATLANTIS — GLACIAL EPOCH. Under the influence of the mutations in the geography of the globe which continued slowly to ho carried on during the eocene and miocene epochs, the faunas and floras which had been nearly uniform over the whole globe, now began to break up into regional provinces. The old flora in which the Australian forms predominated was extirpated in the northern hemisphere, and henceforward confined to Australia, from which, in like manner, were eliminated the elements which were not suited to the climate required for the other types, descended from those of the eocene period. Each country retained (more or less altered according to the extent and nature of the change of condition) the portion of the original eocene flora which suited it best, and from that starting- point the different provinces of organic life have all gradually assumed their present places. At the commencement, however, the provinces were different from what they afterwards became. It has been well ascertained that, in the miocene epoch, both the flora and fauna of North America (although the latter in a less degree) were closely allied to those of Europe at the same time ; and that, while the miocene flora of Europe has undergone an entire change, that of North America has not, but retains to a certain extent the character of that which flourished there in the miocene age. Our information upon these points in that age is fuller than upon them in the eocene. The upper miocene fossiliferous beds at (Eningen, in the valley of the Rhine, between Constance and Schaffhauscn, have supplied a mass of material which has enabled Professor Heer of Zurich to construct a miocene flora of Switzerland,* containing no less than 900 plants (which Professor Oliver would reduce to 800f), while his researches have led him to the conclusion that of phaeno- gamous plants alone there must have been 3000 miocene species, a much richer and more varied flora than Switzerland now possesses ; and the remarkable fact is, that a large number of these be long to North American genera. M. Gaston de Saporta, in a more recent paper on the plants found in the tertiary strata of the South of France,* has added considerably to the number; and the united result has been to establish beyond question that a very striking resemblance, and in some cases even identity, exists between the flora of the miocene epoch in Europe and the present vege tation of California and the Southern States of North America. The miocene beds of Vancouver's Island and North-west America fortunately supply similarly ample material, which has been investigated by M. Lesquereux, and he has satisfactorily established that the miocene flora of that district is extremely similar to that still in existence there, some of the species, such as * " Flora Tertiaria Helvctiae," by Prof. Oswald Heeh. J G. De Sapokta, in " Annaks des Sciences Natur.'' Wintcrtnur, 1805-59. . 1862. t Oliver in "Nat. Hist. Rev." 1802, p. 149. MIOCENE ATLANTIS. 31 the Sequoia sempervirens having apparently continued in existence from the mioccnc times until now. The relative preponderance of type in the European miocene flora at that epoch was, first, that of North America, especially the southern part of the United States, as Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas ; second, of Europe, particularly the Mediterranean district ; third, of Asia ; fourth, of Africa ; and fifth, of Australia. The Australian types had been diminishing in numbers as we ascend from the oolite and the lower eocene to the upper miocene. The American element is especially remarkable in the number of evergreen oaks, maples, planes, poplars, liquid- amber, Robinias, Sequoias, and Taedas, that is, pines with leaves in clusters of three. The con clusions drawn from insects, of which no less than 1322 fossil tertiary species, or supposed species, have been found in Switzerland, correspond in the main with the conclusions derived from plants. These facts suggested to Unger and Goppert the speculation which is known as the " Atlantis theory," or the " Miocene Atlantis," viz. that the present basin of the Atlantic was occupied by land, over which the miocene plants could pass freely, and this hypothesis has been enlarged and advocated with great ability by Heer and other eminent men. To use the words of Sir Charles Lyell : " The existence of a continuous land communication between Eastern America and Western Europe in the pliocene period, by means of which many plants migrated before the glacial epoch, from one region to the other, was also suggested by Mr. Darwin, in his Origin of Species; and Dr. Leidy has observed that a like continuity of land from east to west is implied by the identity of some of the extinct pliocene mammalia of the Niobrara Valley in Nebraska with those of a corresponding geological age in Europe." The fact that it is the Eastern or Atlantic side of America, or that which is nearest to Europe, which presents the greatest number of vegetable forms analogous to the miocene flora, would be an additional argument in favour of the Atlantis, if the present distribution of species and their relative proportion in America gave any clue to those in the miocene age, but if, as I imagine, they do not, the hypothesis must stand upon more general grounds. On the other hand, Dr. Asa Gray, Professor Oliver, and others, following up a hint thrown out by Bentham, have argued that it is more probable that the plants, instead of reaching Europe by the shortest route over an imaginary Atlantis, migrated in an opposite direction, and took a course four times as long across America and the whole of Asia. It rather appears to me, however, that their hypothesis does not apply so much to the miocene epoch as to a subsequent period. When the glacial epoch was at its height, ice covered the whole of North America, as far south as the north of Georgia and Texas (see Map 4) (that, as is proved by the tertiary deposits to the south of them, being the then southern termination of the North American continent), and the ice there ran into the sea in mighty glaciers. In its progress south it must, of course, have driven every plant or animal before it, making a clean sweep of all life wherever it came ; and wherever it rested, covering the land as it did, for thousands and thou sands of years (whether intermittently or not), it must have left the surface a tabula rasa for the reception of new impressions. Where there was an extension of land before it, as in the south-west corner of North America, the plants and animals would take refuge in it. Where there was no extension of land, and the glacier ice terminated in the sea, of course every living thing would be annihilated. In Europe, on the other hand, although the drift or glacial ice did not reach so far south as 32 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. in America, nor, perhaps, the general mass of glaciers run into the Mediterranean Sea, we shall find, if we inquire a little, that it was in a still worse case than North America. The latter had an outlet ; but we shall presently see that Europe had none. Let the reader figure on a map the extent of the land in Europe covered by the glacial ice (shown in Map 4). Then let him lay down its tertiary and quaternary beds (shown in Map 3). They, of course, represent at least some of the water previous to that period — they are the site of the seas in which these beds were deposited. Next, let him remember that at that epoch itself the general level of Europe and Asia was considerably lower than it is now. The Sahara was united with the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and the Black Sea with the Caspian.* Sir Roderick Murchison and M. de Verneuil consider that another sea as large as the Mediter ranean, and several hundred feet in depth, existed about the south of the Caspian during the pliocene epoch (that is, the commencement of the glacial epoch), j It is, therefore, no very uurea sonable surmise that the level of Europe from the longitude of the western termination of the Sahara to the longitude of the Caspian Sea, was 100 fathoms lower than it is now. If the reader will add from Map 2 the portions of Europe, which in that case would be under water, to the other two (the limits of glacial action and tertiary deposits), he will find that Europe has but all disap peared. In addition to this, however, the sandy plains in the centre of Germany stretching with interruptions from the Danube to the Baltic, show every appearance of having been recently under water. If we reckon them also as submerged at that epoch, then Europe, east of the Atlantic, will be practically almost blotted out from the map. If that be so (as so it seems to be), scarcely any life at all can have survived the glacial epoch in Europe. Whether at that time the communication with Asia was also cut off is doubtful, but is not of much consequence, as a communication after the glacial epoch was certainly opened between them. Still, to complete our knowledge of the state of facts during the miocene epoch, we may note, regarding the then boundaries of Europe, that we are sure that it was absolutely cut off on the south by the Sahara, on the south-east by sea, which then covered Arabia and Persia, and by the Aralo-Caspian seas above-mentioned ; and the interesting fact to which we shall presently come, that seals of the same species as those now living in the Arctic Seas, occur both in the Caspian and Lake Baikal, renders it almost certain that a communication existed between the Caspian and the Arctic Seas ; so that Europe, previous to the glacial epooh, was probably a group of islands isolated from Asia, and from Africa — whether or not from America we shall presently see. * " I was particularly struck by the fact, that several given by Sir Roderick Murchison and M. de Verneuil to of my fossil shells from the Sahara, in the superficial de- the limestone and associated sandy beds, of brackish posit, proved specifically identical with fresh-water ter- water origin, which have been traced over a very ei- tiary fossils given me by my friend, Captain Spratt, and tensive area, surrounding the Caspian Azof and Aral Seas, obtained by him in the fresh-water deposits of the Black and parts of the northern and western coasts of the Black Sea." — Tristram's Sahara, p. 370. Sea. The limestone rises occasionally to the height of " M. Escher von dur Luith himself, together with several hundred feet above the sea, and is supposed to MM. Desor and Martius, have found marine shells, espe- indicate the former existence of a vast inland sheet of cially the common Cockle, Condium Edide, scattered far brackish water, as large as the Mediterranean, or larger." and wide, from west to east, over the desert (Sahara) ; " The proportion of recent species, agreeing with the while the shells of these, and other living species, have fauna of the Caspian, is so considerable, as to leave no also been found in boring Artesian wells, at the depth of doubt in the minds of the geologists above cited, that this many feet below the surface." — Lyell's Elements of Geo- rock, also called by them the ' Steppe Limestone,' belongs logy, 6th edit. I860, p. 175. to the pliocene period." — Lyell, op. cit. p. 209. t " Aralo-Caspian formations. — This name has been MIOCENE ATLANTIS. 33 In America, on the other hand, where the flora was not annihilated it must have been driven into its south-west corner ; and the space there into which it must have been circumscribed was much smaller than it is now, for the north-east of Mexico was also then under water as well as Texas, as is proved by the tertiary deposits now covering these districts. Thus it seems plain that all reason ing from the present distribution of plants or animals, or their relative preponderance on this or that side of the continent, must be inapplicable to the state of things which existed prior to the glacial epoch, and therefore can only have an indirect bearing on the miocene Atlantis. That question must be decided on other grounds altogether. The objections to the hypothesis are thus stated by Sir Charles Lyell : — " If the evidence in the botanical scale were equally balanced in favour of these two opposite theories, a geologist would not hesitate to prefer that of Dr. Asa Gray as demanding an incomparably smaller amount of change in physical geography since the close of the miocene period. It is true that since the beginning of that era there have been vast alterations in the level of the Alps and contiguous regions, and in the Mediterranean, especially the iEgean Sea. And there has been, perhaps, as the late Edward Forbes contended, an extension westward of European and North African land, even in the pliocene period. If, instead of assigning an almost historical date to a continental condition of the area between Africa and the Southern States of North America, such as might realize the story of the Atlantis spoken of by the Egyptian priests to Plato,* we could look back through the whole interval which separates us from the eocene or cretaceous periods, we might then, indeed, freely grant, as geologists, any amount of change that may be required in the position of land and sea. " It is the enormous depth and width of the Atlantic which makes us shrink from the hypothesis of a migration of plants, fitted for a sub-tropical climate in the upper miocene period, from America to Europe, by a direct course from west to east." * Professor Unger gives the following account of the organization, and possessed a great intellectual and stra- tradition here referred to : tegic power. As the goddess loves war as much as wisdom,' " The early history of man is still wrapt in obscurity, he continued, ' she selected a country which would produce It is, therefore, the more surprising to meet with a tradi- men closely resembling herself. Under such laws and tion of the highest importance with respect to that geolo- excellent political institutions did your nation then live, gical period, and containing as it were a confirmation of exceeding all others in virtue, as was fit for a people dc- the former connexion of Europe with America, though wc scended from the gods, and educated by them, should have thought that this connexion had ceased long " ' Many of the great deeds of your nation preserved in before man's appearance on earth. This curious tradition our writings cause surprise. But one of them exceeds all is found in Plato's dialogue entitled 'Timams.' Here direct others in magnitude and splendour. It is recorded how mention is made of a great island of Atlantis, situated -your country once opposed a power which with great ar- beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and the seat of a powerful rogance pushed its way into Europe and Asia from the nation. A priest of Sais made this singular communica- Atlantic Ocean, for in those days that sea was navigable, tion to Solon, who had gone to Egypt to become acquainted Beyond the entrance, which you call the Pillars of Hercules, with the wisdom of that caste. It is mix«d with a great there was an island larger than Libya and Asia together, deal that must appear unhistorical, and it puzzles us to From it navigators passed to the other islands, and from know how an Egyptian priest could have come by this tra- them to the opposite continent, which surrounded that dition, or how Plato could arrive at so singular a concep- ocean. tion. Let us hear Plato himself: — ' After the said priest " ' For the sea, situated inside that strait of which we has pointed out that Egypt is the only country where speak, appears to be a sea with a narrow entrance, but the traces of the oldest history of man could be preserved, he other would justly be termed an ocean, and the adjacent informs Solon that Greece, and especially Athens, had a land a continent. On this extensive Atlantic island there very ancient history, which, however, had been lost there, was a powerful and singular kingdom, whose dominion ex- he draws his attention to the fact that that country was tended not only over the whole island, but over many settled earlier even than Sais by the goddess Neith. other islands and parts of the continent. It ruled, also, Athens enjoyed at remoto times a well-regulated political over Libya as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as r 34 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. " The ideal map given by Heer of the Atlantis represents a continent as large as Europe pre cisely in that portion of the Atlantic Ocean which is now the broadest and deepest, viz., from two to three miles in its deepest portions."* Notwithstanding this, the facts appear to me clearly to show that during the miocene epoch there must have been a land communication between Europe and America. It is well ascertained that the floras of America and Europe were the same in the miocene age, and that the miocene type still continues in America, but not in Europe. At the same time, and notwithstanding the bearing of these facts in favour of an Atlantis, it is not impossible that a " north-west pass age," sufficient for the purpose of intercommunication may have existed, although not directly across the Atlantic ; it may have been by Greenland ; it would only require a very trifling change in the level of the land to establish a communication between America and Europe by the North Pole. We must remember that the Polar climate at the time was genial. Frost and snow were unknown, and the northern district of Iceland, and several parts of the Arctic lands, such as Disco Island, on the west coast of Greenland, lat. 70° N., although at the present time entirely without trees, were densely wooded in the tertiary period. Fragments of trees are preserved in the lignite or " Surturbrand " of Iceland, and as they are still covered with bark they cannot have reached it as drift-wood. This vegetation agrees with that which in the miocene epoch covered the whole European continent, and a portion of the species composing it have their analogues in North America." That route was amply sufficient to supply America, without another across the Atlantic ; and, therefore, had we only to consider the miocene epoch, I should join the ranks of the oppo nents of the theory, simply on the ground that it was unnecessary. But if not a necessity before the glacial epoch, it becomes a necessity after it. The Polar climate was then no longer as mild as that of Madeira, nothing temperate could pass by the Polar route, and yet many instances occur of the same species being found both in Europe and North America, which must have found their way from the one to the other, subsequent to the glacial epoch ; and if such a communi cation existed after the glacial epoch, it is an unavoidable corollary, that it also existed pre vious to that epoch, viz. in the miocene times, when the extent of dry land was increasing in stead of diminishing, as was the case after the cold had begun to retire. If such an extension of land between Europe and Asia formerly existed, where was it placed and what were its limits ? The first position which has claims to be considered is in the line Tyrrhenia. This kingdom, with the whole of its forces Atlantis sank into the ocean. This is the reason why, at united, tried to subjugate, in one campaign, your and our present, that sea is difficult to pass and explore, the deep country, and all the districts inside the straits. At that mud which the island formed in sinking being an obstacle time, O Solon, your nation shone out from all others by to navigation.' bravery and power. Taking the lead by courage and in "Thus far the curious passage in ' Timreus,' a satisfac- the arts of war, be it as leaders of the Hellenes, be it neces- tory explanation of which historians, philologists, and sarily isolated by the withdrawal of the allies, it was placed naturalists, have hitherto attempted in vain. That this in great danger, but it defeated the attacking army, and tradition is entirely imaginary would be bold to assume, erected triumphal monuments. It also prevented those since we have shown that its most important substratum who had as yet preserved their independence from becom- is sound, and that at one time a continent did exist in the ing subjugated, and generously freed all the others living Atlantic Ocean." — XJ-SGVSKjVersunkene Insel Atlantis. Wien, inside the Pillars of Hercules. But, when at a later period I860. Copied from Translation in " Socman's Journal of severe earthquakes and great iloods took place, the whole Botany." January, 1865, p. 23. of your united army was swallowed up during one evil day * " Elements of Geology," by Sir Charles Ltell. and one evil night, and at the same time the island of London, 1865, pp. 265-272. no 160 ISO 140 130 IZO HO IOO 90 so 60 SO 40 30 so too no m 1&• t#j iso i6o no Wgk MIOCENE ATLANTIS. 35 of the Sargasso Sea or Gulf weed in the middle of the Atlantic ; and, as the claim founded on the existence of that weed applies not only to this case, hut may have to ho considered in other parts of the world, it may be desirable to state once for all in some detail the grounds on which his hypothesis is founded. They are contained in the following note by Edward Forbes in his paper on " The Geological Relations of the Existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles : " — " The following extract from the writings of one of the first of living Algologists (Prof. Harvey) will show that there are botanical grounds for my speculation respecting the Gulf weed. ' Authors who have written on this Funis, have much disputed both regarding its origin, and whether it continues to grow whilst floating about. Nothing at all bearing on the former question has yet been discovered; for, though species of Sargassum abound along the shores of tropical coun tries, none exactly corresponds with S. baccferum. That the ancestors of the present bank have originally migrated from some fixed station is probable ; but further than probability we can say nothing. That it continues to flourish in its present situation is most certain. Whoever has picked it up at sea and examined it with any common attention, must have perceived not only that the plants were in vigorous life, but that new fronds were continually pushing out from the old, the limit being most clearly defined by the colour, which in the old frond is foxy-brown ; in the young shoots, pale, transparent olive. But how is it propagated, for it never produces fructification ? It appears to me that it is by breakage. The old frond, which is exceedingly brittle, is broken by accident, and the branches continuing to live, push out young shoots from all sides. Many minute pieces that I have examined were as vigorous as those of larger size, but they were certainly not seedlings, and appeared to me to be broken branches, all having a piece of old frond from which the young shoots sprung. As the plant increases in size it takes something of a globular figure, from the branches issuing in all directions as from a centre. On our own shores we have two species analogous to S. bacciferum in their mode of growth, namely, Fiicus Mackayi and the variety B. sub-ecostata of Fucus tcsiculosus (F. Balticus, Ag.) Neither of these has ever yet been found attached, though they often occur in immense strata ; the one on the muddy sea-shore, the other in salt marshes, in which situations respectively they continue to grow and flourish ; and it is remarkable that neither has ever yet been found in fructification, in which respect also they strikingly coincide with S. bacciferum. And if it be hereafter shown that F. Mackayi is merely F. nodosus altered by growing under peculiar circumstances, may it not be inferred that Sargassum bacciferum, which differs about as much from Sargassum vulgare as Fucus Mackayi does from Fucus nodosus, is merely a pelagic variety of that variable plant ? ' — Harvey, Manual ofthe British Algm (1841.) Introduction, pp. 16, 17. " My friend and colleague, Dr. Joseph Hooker, who has had great opportunities of studying the Gulf weed, believes with Dr. Harvey, that the Sargassum bacciferum is an abnormal condition of S. vulgare. Now as the latter is essentially a coast-line plant, growing on rocks with a very limited vertical range, I propose to account for its abnormal condition as Sargassum bacciferum in the Gulf weed bank, on the supposition of the submergence ofthe ancient line of coast on which it originated."* The idea here may either be, that the weed has spread from the ancient submerged line of coast over the whole of the rest of its bounds, or that the limits or outer margin of the Sargassum mark the ancient original coast-line, and that the whole of the space within these limits has been filled up with Sargassum by its having by successive subsidences all passed through the phase- of coast-line. * Ed. Forbes, on the Geological Relations of the exist- the Geological Survey of Great Britain and of the Museum ing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles in " Memoirs of of Economic Geology." London, 1846. Vol. i. p. 349. 36 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. There is no impossibility in this, nor even any very great improbability ; but thero is an explanation of its dispersion and distribution (it bailiff once there in some j1art of the area), which seems to meet the facts equally well by the phenomena in daily operation, and if there be a sufficient cause already at hand, it would be unphilosophical to abandon it, and refer the result to another whose former existence is only a supposition. The phenomena which furnish such an explanation are the currents which surround the Gulf weed bed, and the explanation is that the Sargasso is thrown into and kept in its present position by the eddy or whirl caused by their revolution on every side of it. Humboldt, I think, was the first . to notice that it occupied the eddy, and Maury states the theory broadly, that the Sargasso Seas are composed of drift matter, which cannot escape or accompany the current which brings it, in consequence of its being met by another current. " The water that is drifting north on the outside of the Gulf stream turns with the Gulf stream to the east also. It cannot reach the high latitudes, for it cannot cross the Gulf stream. Two streams of water cannot cross each other, unless one dip down and under-run the other ; and if this drift water do dip down, as it may, it cannot carry with it its floating matter, which, like its weeds, is too light to sink. They, therefore, are cut off from a passage into higher latitudes. According to this view there ought to be a Sargasso sea somewhere in the sort of middle ground between the grand equatorial flow and reflow, which is performed by the waters of all the great oceans. The place where the drift matter of each sea would naturally collect would be in this sort of pool, into which every current, as it goes from the equator, and again as it returns, would slough off its drift matter. The forces of diurnal rotation would require this collection of drift to be in the northern hemisphere, on the right hand side of the current, and in the southern to be on the left. Thus, with the " Gulf Stream " of the Atlantic, and the " Black Stream " of the Pacific, their Sargassos are on the right, as they are also on the right of the returning and cooler currents on the eastern side of each one of those northern oceans. So, also with the Mozambique current, which runs south along the east coast of Africa from the Indian Ocean, and with the cooler current setting to the north on the Australian side of the same sea. Between these there is a Sargasso on the left, for it is in the southern hemisphere. Again, there is in the South Pacific a flow of equatorial waters to the Antarctic on the east of Australia, and of Antarctic waters (Humboldt's current) to the north, along the western shores of South America ; and, according to this principle, there ought to be another Sargasso somewhere between New Zealand and the coast of Chili. To test the correctness of this view, I requested Lieut. Warley to overhaul our sea journals for notices of kelp and drift matter on the passage from Australia to Cape Horn and the Chiucha Islands. He did so, and found it abounding in small patches, with 'many birds about,' between the parallels of 40° and 50° south, and the meridian of 140° and 178° west. This Sargasso is directly south of the Georgian Islands, and is perhaps less abundantly supplied with drift matter, less distinct in outline, and less permanent in position than any one of the others."* It thus appears that instead of three, as stated in the former editions of Lieut. Maury's "Physical Geography of tho Sea," there are really five Sargassos, and it is from his maps that I have laid them down as shown on Map 5*. Now the objection to Maury's explanation taken by itself is, that the Sargasso, at least in the Atlantic, is composed of only one ingredient, the Sargassum bacciferum ; whilst any collection of true drift would necessarily be composed of a heterogeneous accumulation of all sorts of things. If * Maury, " Physical Geography of the Sea," 1860, p. 50. MIOCENE ATLANTIS. 37 the Sargassum were once there, there would be no difficulty in admitting that the effect of the streams or currents would be to keep it fenced in within their limits. And it would not be necessary for this that it should have originally occupied the whole of the space which it now does. Once within it, although originally occupying only a small corner, it might have spread all over it (the conditions of the ocean being there everywhere similar), but could not pass the boundaries of these currents. I therefore think that to obtain a true explanation of the Sargasso Seas we require both Forbes and Humboldt's theories ; Forbes' to explain the original appearance of the weed, Humboldt's its present limits. If we admit this, it follows that Gulf weed in the Atlantic indicates the submergence of land somewhere in that ocean ; but it does not indicate where the submergence took place. It may not have been within it at all. It may have been in the course of some of the surrounding currents, and the weed which sprung from it may have been caught up and carried along by it until tossed into the eddy, there to spread over the whole tranquil space. The fact, however, of the restriction of species within their original bounds, leads me to believe that the starting-point or specific centre of this species, or this form of the Sargassum vidgarr, if it be not a distinct species, and consequently the point of the disappearance of an ancient coast of submerged land, must have probably been within the bounds of the Atlantic Sargasso. It may not have been the miocene Atlantis ; that is, the route of communication between Europe and North America ; but for all that the weed may mark in whole or in part the site of submerged land. If not on the site of the Gulf- weed where else can the Atlantis have been ? Heer and Unger, while they do not adopt Forbes' idea, place it, as already said, across the widest and deepest part of the North Atlantic, somewhat to the north of the Sargasso. I think it must have been still more to the north ; certainly it kept its last hold well to the north, for all the species very closely allied, or common to both Europe and America, are northern types; not species which might have crossed from Andalusia or Algeria, to Florida, nor of so extreme a polar character that they could have crossed by Greenland in its present climate, but such as might have done so by Labrador or Nova Scotia. I imagine there must have been a great extension of land on the European side of the Atlantic, reaching beyond the Azores, uniting Spain and Ireland, and stretching westward by Newfoundland and its banks to Nova Scotia and Labrador on the one hand, and northwards to Greenland and Spitzbergen on the other. It is not to be doubted that this arrangement of land and water must have greatly contributed to the occurrence of the glacial epoch. It is also probable that the termination of that epoch was due in part, if not entirely, to the sinking of a large part of this preponderance of land, but that it had not wholly disappeared by the time the cold of the glacial epoch was in the wane. If it were so, and the connexion between Greenland and Europe still subsisted, that would much increase the probability that the connexion with America also subsisted to a greater or less ex tent for some time. Let us see what there is to be said in favour of this view. It is not difficult to show that such a connexion did continue between Greenland and Europe. In the first place, Greenland has a fauna and flora which are not its own. 'Whence has it received them ? Singularly enough they bear more than one impress. The mammalian fauna and the ornis is American. The flora and entomology is European ; and these different phases of organic life represent a different distribution of land and water when they were established. Of course when organic life began to replace the inanimate desolation left by the glacial epoch 38 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. over all Greenland, plants would come first, then insects, and afterwards birds and mammals. Until vegetation clothed the land, animal life must have been absent. There was nothing for it on which to subsist. I have said that the flora is American. This has been amply shown by Dr. Hooker in his valuable paper on the distribution of Arctic plants. He has also shown that it is peculiar in the paucity of the number of its species, compared with other equally Arctic lands ; it con taining actually fewer species of European plants, than have found their way-eastwards from Lapland, by Asia into western and eastern Arctic America.* He conceives that this is all explained by Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, — "First, that the existing Scandinavian flora is of great antiquity ; and that previous to the glacial epoch, it was more uni formly distributed over the Polar zone than it is now. Secondly, that during the advent of the glacial period the Scandinavian vegetation was driven southwards in every longitude ; and even across the tropics into the south temperate zone. And that on the succeeding warmth of the present epoch, those species that survived both, ascended the mountains of the warmer zones, and also returned northwards accompanied by aborigines of the countries they had invaded during their southern migration."* He savs, " If it be granted that the Polar area was once occupied by the Scandinavian flora, and that the cold of the glacial epoch did drive this vegetation southwards, it is evident that the Greenland individuals, from being confined to a peninsula, would be exposed to very different conditions to those of the great continents. In Greenland many species would, as it were, be driven into the sea, — that is, exterminated ; and the survivors would be confined to the southern portion of the peninsula. And not being there, brought into competition with other types, there could be no struggle for life amongst their progeny ; and, consequently, no selection of better adapted varieties. On the return of heat these survivors would simply travel northwards unaccompanied by the plants of any other country, "f The first point in the above propositions which I should wish to notice, is the assumed existence of a boreal flora before the commencement of the glacial epoch. This is a point which is always taken for granted. The usual conception of the matter is that stated above by Dr. Hooker. 'Were the question under consideration solely what was the course of action to which these northern types were sub mitted during and after the glacial epoch, of course the exact period when they first made their appearance would be of little consequence. But it is different with me here. The ques tion is one of vital importance to my theory, and I cannot afford to pass it as a matter of indifference. If the origin of species is in any respect due to change of condition of life, then at the glacial epoch, if ever, great alterations must have taken place. The southern migra tion of species from the north, their subsequent return, and the lingering behind of some on high mountains, no one disputes ; but they arc facts belonging to one category, while the original ap pearance of these northern types are facts belonging to another. It is essential for me to dispute the proposition that these arctic types existed previous to the glacial epoch. If that were true, my theory would be worthless, and I must give it up. But the proposition is not true. Not a single arctic or boreal species of either plant or animal has ever been discovered in any stratum of older date than the glacial epoch. It was the cold of that epoch which produced them all. How soon it was Hooker, in " Trans. Linn. Soc„" xxiii. p. 253. + Hooker, op. cit. pp. 254 and 258. THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 39 after the appearance of the cold that the species were changed from their southern type into northern forms we cannot tell. My view is that it would be soon ; but doubtless, as the cold increased and advanced southwards, fresh boreal species would be developed by the increase of the power of the instrument of change, and doubtless also on its decrease as well as its increase the same result would follow. But what I maintain is, that until the cold began, boreal species there were none. I speak not only of plants, but of shells, mammals, and every created thing. Some botanists speak of the plants returning in the same line of longitude after the retreat of the glacial epoch as they had advanced before it. If my view is correct, this of course is impossible. Neither can I adopt Dr. Hooker's view of the course of action of the glacial cold in Greenland, and its probable effect upon " the survivors," for two reasons, the one that Greenland in all pro bability had not then its present configuration, but was united to Europe ; the other, that, supposing it not to have been so, then I cannot conceive to be possible that there should have been any survivors. It seems a physical impossibility that any germ of life could have survived the envelopc- ment of the soil for thousands of years, with a thick coating of ice, which was certainly the con dition of the whole northern .hemisphere to a far more southerly latitude than Greenland. When the glacial epoch arrived and advanced southwards, it must have operated in two ways — it must either have killed, or transformed into something else, all those species of plants and animals which were subjected to its influence. It is also possible that it may have driven before it, at a respectful distance, all those which escaped its influence, and which migrated southward, carrying their climate with them ; but as a uniform climate had until then subsisted at least as far south as Greece, as is proved by the fossil flora of Eubcea, it is not necessary for Our argument to decide whether the old miocene flora still subsisted in the southern parts of Europe in virtue of that* having been the general and established flora of the country, or if, under the altered conditions of climate, it was now confined to those parts where the temperature and other conditions of life suited it. To this it is doubtless due that certain miocene genera, such as Clethra, Bystropogon, Cedronella, and Oreodaphne, still subsist in the flora of Madeira and Porto Santo, and of the Canaries and the Azores, as well as in North America. In either view there would, both in the Old World and the New, be a double band of species ; the most southerly consisting of the old species which lived before the glacial epoch ; and next, a more northerly band fringing the line of ice, consisting of what we now call Alpine and Boreal plants and animals, and which were developed out of the old species under the influence of the novel sensation of cold. But although Dr. Hooker's explanation of the facts is not satisfactory to me, I readily accept his facts themselves, and they show that, as already said, the type of the flora of Greenland is European ; and if all life existing in Greenland previous to the glacial epoch was then exterminated, it follows from their presence there now that it must have been connected with Europe subse quently to that epoch, for a sufficient time to allow it to be refurnished with European plants and insects. It is a necessity, not a matter of probability. Next, as Iceland, Greenland, and Spitzbergen,* all three possess nearly the same flora, and that flora European, they must either have been united to each other and to Europe in one line, or united by different necks of land to the Continent ; which latter supposition, although not im- * There are some peculiarities in that of Spitzbcrgen to which I shall presently advert. 40 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. possible, is inconsistent with the close similarity of the floras of these lands, with the configura tion of the bed of the neighbouring sea, and with other facts having a like bearing. The European character of the plants and insects of Greenland, Iceland, and Spitzbergen, is sufficient evidence that they must have been connected with Europe in some way, but that alone throws but little light on the point of connexion. It may have been by Norway, by Nova Zembla, or by Britain. The following considerations show that it must have been by the latter : — No tree now grows in Orkney or Shetland; the only ligneous things that do grow are the Betula alba and the common juniper, both merely existing as shrubs ; but at six feet beneath a peat-bog, trees, branches, leaves, and cones, ascribed to the silver fir, have been found — one tree in particular of six feet in circumference and forty feet in height,* being recorded by Mr. Edmon- ston as having been found in peat in Shetland. When did these trees grow, and what was the climate of Britain then ? Was it really milder then than now, as we should be inclined to expect, from the fact of these trees being found in Shetland, where they will not now grow ? As to the date of their growth there, there can be very little doubt that it was subsequent to the glacial epoch. The grinding of the ice of that time would sweep away every trace of peat-bogs from the surface of the land. Were a Swiss glacier to meet a peat-bog in its course, it would soon plough it up, and scarify the ground to the very bone below. It is plain, therefore, that the tree must have grown and died, and the peat been deposited, subse quent to the glacial epoch. Now one of two things must have taken place since it grew ; either the general climate of the Northern hemisphere must have undergone a change, and that change must have been from warmer to colder, or the individual climate of Shetland must have done so by an alteration in its configura tion and physical condition. But the growth of these silver firs (if silver firs they be and not spruces, a point on which the record is not absolutely clear) could not be due to any material change in the general climate of the whole country : for their remains arc found in the peat, in company with those of the Scotch pine and spruce fir, and as these are the same trees that now grow in the corresponding isothermal line on the Continent, no general alteration from warmer to colder can well have taken place over the whole hemisphere ; and as it is only on the Continent or in lands not exposed to the sea that they thrive in that latitude, it may be inferred that at the time they grew there the Shetlands were either not islands, or not such small islands. But the Shetland Islands rise nearly precipitously from a wide submarine plain seventy-four fathoms deep, which extends from these islands to within no great distance of the coast of Norway. Their form, therefore, shows that any increase on their size could only be obtained by such an eleva tion as would unite them to the Continent, from Denmark southwards ; and there is little doubt that that must have been the position of matters when the trees in question grew on these islands. Along the west coast of Norway a deep channel extends in continuation of that of the Baltic. That sea then must have trended away up by the west coast of Norway, and Britain must have been joined on to the present Continent from the Shetlands to the north of Denmark, all south of a line drawn between them being much less than seventy-four fathoms in depth. The Rhine and the Elbe, so soon as by the subsequent rise of the land they came into existence, probably emptied themselves into the Baltic. * Edmonston, iu " Annals of Natural History," 1841, vii. 295, and Edmonston in " Phytologist," i. 430. THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 41 There remains the difficult question whether the embouchure of the Baltic opened into the Atlantic between Iceland and the British Islands, or between Spitzbergen and Finmark ; in other words, whether Greenland was united to Europe by Norway, or by Britain. As Iceland, Greenland, and Spitzbergen, were united, the Baltic must have reached the sea by one or other of the above passages. I have tried to make out something from a comparison of the phaenogamic flora of Great Britain, and of the Scandinavian Peninsula, with that of Greenland. I thought that it might show traces of its former connexion by an undue preponderance of any peculiarity existing in the one flora or the other ; but they have turned out so equally balanced, that no inference, one way or the other, could be drawn from the contrast.* It is therefore very much a matter of imagination which supposition we adopt. I prefer the union with Britain for the following fancies, I can scarcely call them reasons. 1. It carries on the land in the same line in which what we see of it is already directed. 2. There are a number of stepping-stones on the way which may be supposed to indicate the topmost summits, and the course of the sunken land ; and 3. It allows the prolongation of the Baltic to pursue its course to the open sea in a straight line instead of turning it off a second time at right angles. The proof that Greenland was united to Europe subsequently to the glacial epoch, is thus clear enough. That the communication between Europe and America also subsisted for a short time, although probably imperfect and interrupted, seems also pretty plain; it is more difficult to judge whether that communication still subsisted after the separation between these lands took place. The fact that Iceland is wholly destitute of aboriginal mammals, except perhaps what may prove to be an American Lemming, and that those of Greenland and Spitzbergen are not of the European, but American type, shows that the connexion between Europe -and them, while it endured long enough to allow them to be peopled by European plants and European insects, was severed before mammals followed on their trace. The connexion with both continents may then have been severed, for although the mammals in Greenland are of the American type, they are very few, and all of a class that might have migrated across any moderate distance of ice ; and Spitzbergen and Iceland may have continued united to Greenland after both were disunited from the rest of Europe. In any view it is only the now submerged north-western portion of miooene Europe, which still subsisted during and after the glacial epoch. Its south-western part cannot have done so, or we should have had a flora in Europe more nearly resembling that of North America. Some remains of it, however, still survive, to show that the miocene flora escaped, where it was beyond the influence of the cold. I may remark, par parent htee, here, that it would be difficult to find two lands better adapted for illustrations of Mr. Darwin's views of colonization by flotsam and jetsam than Spitzbergen and * I took the Greenland flora from the tables in Hooker's siderably greater than those in Britain, the numbers being essay above mentioned ; the Scandinavian from Frie's 1708 Scandinavian plants against 1239 British, conse- " Summa Vegetabilium Scandinavire," and the British from quently the former might be expected to possess the Bentham's "Hand Book" (as steering a just medium be- largest actual number of species ; tried according to that tween the extreme opinions regarding species on both ratio, the proportion of Greenland plants to the whole of sides), and this comparison gives 232 Greenland species the Scandinavian is a little more than a seventh (about as found in the Scandinavian Peninsula, and only 1Cj7 in 7.J), while that of Britain is also a little more than a Britain, but this apparent preponderance in favour of seventh (about 7J), showing that the difference is teo Scandinavia is neutralised by the fact that the number of slight to allow us to draw any conclusions from it either species inhabiting the Scandinavian Peninsula is con- one way or other. G 12 FRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. Iceland, both large islands, the one with a flora limited to ninety-three species, the other apparently without an indigenous mammal. In the former, the most remarkable fact in favour of the view is that Spitzbergen appears to have two, if not three, floras represented on its shores, — literally its shores, — because the interior is a pile of snow and ice where nothing can live.* The flora of the west coast has been chiefly borrowed from Greenland ; that on the north coast has a considerable flavour of the Melville and Parry Islands species, there being, besides half a dozen species peculiar to Mel ville Island, no less . than 58 out of the 83 composing the flora of that island found in Spitz bergen, and chiefly on its north coast, and about 53 out of 124 species from Eastern Asia. It is not said whether these latter are chiefly found on the eastern coast or not. If it should prove so, we should then have each coast with a predominance of species from the country lying opposite it, which certainly would look something like colonization by immigration by some such means. On the other hand. Mammals, such as the Reindeer and Hare, could have come neither by flotsam nor jetsam. It is possible that they might have crossed the ice, particularly if much land lies between Spitzbergen and Melville Island ; but former contiguity or continuity of land seems the more probable explanation. As to Iceland, its flora does not seem to have any of these peculiarities, and besides, although only amounting to 445 phanerogamous species, it is still greatly too large to allow of our supposing it all to have come over sea. Before leaving these frozen regions I may remark that their floras furnish confirmation of the justice of my view of the origin of species on one point, viz., that without change of condition no new species can be produced. There can hardly be any condition more constant than continual cold ; and we find in conformity with what we might expect from such a character, that the species which are frigid in their constitution exist without change in Greenland, the Alps, the Him- malayahs and Andes, while those of more temperate character have disappeared in some localities and become changed in others, — the change probably being due to interventions of more moderate climate. The Greenland and Spitzbergen species are all of an arctic character, and have come back with and kept pace with the cold, consequently we should not expect to obtain any change or development of new species out of them, and so it is. With the exception of a single insig nificant new grass (Catabrosa Vilfotoea) in Spitzbergen, not a single species has been found either in Spitzbergen or Greenland which was not already known as occurring elsewhere. * Malmgren says, " The summer's heat melts the snow is an old sea-shore, and that Spitzbergen is gradually and fits the soil for its scanty vegetation only on a narrow rising above the sea. This narrow ledge of so compara- strip of land, which stretches along the coast between the tively recent a geological age, supports the great proportion sea and the nearest mountain ridge. The mountains of the vegetation ; only a third of the species are found seldom rise precipitously from the sea, there is generally on the north coast at a greater height than 300 feet above such a narrow terrace of about one-eighth to half a mile the sea." According to his view, the flora of Spitzbergen in width. Its composition and the sub-fossil whale-bones must consequently also be comparatively recent, and still and mollusca contained in the uppermost bed of gravel, continuing to increase. — See Malmgren, op. cit. Transla- which is 50 to 150 feet above the sea, show that this ledge tion in Seeman's " Journal of Botany," p. 173. -13 CHAPTER V. PAST GEOGRAPHY OF THE GLOBE Continued GLACIAL EPOCH. Such a Miocene Atlantis as that above defined sufficiently explains the common distribution of plants and animals in Europe and America, up to the glacial epoch. 'We have now to consider how and by what channels the rehabilitation and distribution of these lands themselves were effected subsequent to that period. I have rather anticipated this in regard to Greenland, Iceland, and Spitzbergen. But tho main question of the restoration of life to Europe and America still remains. Life in North America being by the glacial cold driven into Mexico, and in Europe almost entirely extirpated, and the communication with North America cut off, except at an extreme point which lay at the greatest distance from the surviving focus of life in each country respectively, viz. as regards America in the extreme north-east, while all the surviving life was crowded into the extreme south-west ; and as regards Europe in the extreme north-west, while the nearest point whence life could be drawn was probably the south-east of Asia ; it is plain that neither of the continents could help the other, America could receive European colonists, and Europe American, only after they had each been re-peopled from some other source. In the first place, as to Europe, it is plain that it must have drawn its new inhabitants almost entirely from Asia ; the Sahara still subsisted as a sea, although perhaps diminished in size, and cut it off from Africa ; and accordingly no trace of the fauna or flora of Africa proper is to be found in Europe.* There was, therefore, no place except Asia on which it could draw (any slight remnants of the miocene flora which are still to be found in Europe were doubtless preserved in those parts of the South of Europe which existed as islands beyond the reach of the ice of the glacial epoch ;) and, in accordance with this, we find that the flora and fauna of Europe and Asia are essentially the same. It is to be expected that in such an immense tract of country climatal variations must have arisen since then ; and we can distinguish three sub-provinces (which may be called respectively the Scandinavian, the Mediterranean, and the East, or Mongolo-Siberian), but essentially the whole of Asia north of the line of the Himmalayahs and Europe is of one type. When we come to trace the spread of particular species of plants and animals, I have been surprised to find how happily this view explains many seeming anomalies, which have puzzled naturalists to account for, such as the distribution of the cedars — the silver firs — many of the mammals, and in fact of every class of organic life in Europe and Northern Asia. As to America the whole of its pre-existing flora and fauna having been crowded into the north west of Mexico and Central America, that is the source from which it must have been restored. On the retreat of the ice the flora, of course, would follow it step by step, but its starting-point being west of the dividing ridge or backbone of America, or, what is probably more to the purpose, west of the tertiary sea which lay in the line of the Missouri and Mackenzie Rivers, and thus being penned in between the Pacific and these barriers, it would flow up in strength into Cali- * Any instances, such as the lion or leopard, which pearancc. See remarks on the distribution of the lion — seem inconsistent with this statement, are only so in ap- postea. 44 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. fornia and Oregon, and only such a portion of it as might be ahle to cross the ridge or sea would succeed in making good its footing on the eastern side of North America. I conceive that the Missouri sea must have been the more important obstacle of the two ; because the place where that sea lay is to this day the limiting boundary between various species inhabiting the country to the cast and west of it. That sea, however, was interrupted near the south, and by that interruption Eastern America doubtless received many of its species. The sea appears to have run up straight to the Arctic Ocean in the line of the Mackenzie River ; but I have a strong expectation that it will be found, when the regions to the north of Vancouver's Island are thoroughly examined, that this sea had another communication with the Pacific perhaps not very far north of or on the site of the tertiary beds near that island, which acted as a barrier isolating the strip of land which lies along the coast of the Pacific between the mountains and the sea. This seems probable from the following facts in the distribution of Asiatic plants in America, or of American types in Asia. Professor Gray has shown that the relations of the flora of Eastern Asia (as more particularly expressed by that of Japan) with that of the United States, east of the Mississippi arc peculiarly intimate. This is evinced by the great number of congeneric, closely representative, and identical 6pecies in the two floras. Also that although there is a considerable number of species com mon to the western side of the American continent and to Japan, yet that the likeness is less strong between their floras than between those of Eastern North America and Japan. On the other hand, large American genera (such as Eutatorium, Aster, Solidago, Solanum) are represented in Asia by a small number of species, which diminish or disappear as we approach the Atlantic limits of Europe, whilst the types peculiar to the extreme west of Europe are wholly deficient in America. " The deficiency," says Dr. Gray, "in the temperate American flora of forms at all peculiar to Western Europe is almost complete, and is most strikingly in contrast with the large number of Eastern American forms repeated or represented in Eastern Asia." Professor Gray thus accounts for these facts. First, he adopts the theory that a more extended homogeneous and uniform distribution of plants than wc now have existed previous to the glacial epoch ; that during the continuance of that epoch, the northern types migrated, or were driven southwards, (although he does not seem to accept the idea of their being driven so com pletely out of the country as I have supposed), and that, on the retreat of the ice before the returning warmth, the temperate flora which had survived the cold returned to the north, fol lowing the steps of the ice pari passu ; and, what he considers an important point, that they must have advanced further north, and especially north-westward, than they now do, so far, indeed, that the temperate flora of North America and Eastern Asia must have become con terminous. He then supposes that an epoch, called by Dana the Fluvial epoch, followed the Glacial epoch, which, from whatever cause, was of a milder character than our present climate, as he thinks is proved by the remains of species of Megatherium, Mylodon, Megalonyx, Mas todon, and the Mammoth, having been found in the deposits of that period. He argues that all the facts known to us, even to the limiting of the drift, show that the configuration of the two continents was nearly the same then as now, and the isothermal lines curved as now (which, so far as regards the isothermal lines, the reader will see to be correct by comparing the limits of the glacial action in Europe and America shown in Map 4) ; that such a more genial climate would commingle the temperate floras of the two continents by Bhering's Straits, or perhaps by the still shorter route of a tract of land between Kanitsckatka and the Aleutian Islands. THE TERRACE EPOCH. 45 Still following Dana's geological views, he imagines a third epoch (the Terrace Epoch), which is the transition between his fluvial epoch and the present state of things, during which he supposes that the interchange of migrations by which the preponderating affinity between the East of North America and the East of Asia over that of Western America was effected, took place by, and in virtue of, the isothermal lines. To use his own words, — " The interchange of plants between the East of North America and Eastern Asia has mainly taken place in high northern latitudes, and that tho isothermal lines have, in earlier times, turned northward on our eastern, and southward on our north-western coast, as they now do, are points wdiich go far towards explaining why Eastern North America, rather than Oregon and California, has been mainly concerned in it, and why the temperate interchange, even with Europe, has principally taken place in Asia." I am a little sceptical about the supposed fluvial epoch ; and its climate being milder than that of the present day. The presence of the Megatherium might be worth something as evidence of a warm climate, seeing that the typical South American species hived in a warm climate, and that the species itself lived previous to the glacial epoch ; but the company of the Mammoth, and this not a tropical Mammoth, but the woolly fur-clothed Elephas primigenius, adds nothing to the force of that fact. If the maxim " noscitur a xociis" is to bo applied, its association with the species of Megatherium and Mylodon in question would be fatal to the idea of a mild climate. For, although the kindred of the Megatheres lived in a warm climate, so did the kindred of the Mammoth : and yet we are as sure almost as we can be of anything depending on palneontological evidence that the Siberian Mammoth (Elephas primigenius) was an animal fitted for a cold climate. More over, the evidence of extinct Megatheres having survived the glacial epoch is not altogether beyond suspicion. Tho reader will find the question more fully discussed when w■e come to the Edentata. If they did, they did not survive it long, and only in the most southern and warmest parts of North America. The argument from the isothermal lines is more satisfactory. There is, however, one purpose to which it is applied by Professor Gray in which I cannot concur, and that is, to explain the cause why species which, according to him, have crossed from Asia, have passed by, or omitted to enter, north-west America, and travelled on to Eastern America. His theory explains most happily and ingeniously how species, whose habitat is in Eastern Asia and Eastern America at as low a latitude as 50° N., may yet have been able to cross from one continent to the other at a latitude of upwards of 60°, but having once crossed, I do not see they should have a greater range of latitude in east than west America, nor why the species should be absent in the latter altogether. The fact is, however, that they have not spread into north-west America. That district — that strip of land lying to the west of the Rocky Mountains — has been passed by the plants, whether from Asia or Eastern America? If the plants really touched the north of this territory, there must have been some other reason for their going past it than the difference in temperature. There must have been a barrier there which they could not pass ; and I think the hypothesis which I have above suggested, that at that time there was a strait or sea to the north of Vancouver's Island, joining, what I may call the Missouri-Mackenzie tertiary sea, is the true explanation of the phenomenon. Such a barrier would hem in and preserve North- West America as a com paratively isolated region, in which, as Dr. Hooker points out, — "we have, as in an oceanic island, a great mixture of types (Asiatic, European, East and West American) and paucity of species."* * Hooker, "On the Distribution of Arctic Plants," in Linnean Society's Transactions, vol. xxiii., p. 275. 1S61. 46 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. There is, however, another feature in the distribution of vegetation in North America, which has been used as an argument in favour of the miocene Atlantis without regard to the interruption of phenomena which must have been occasioned by the glacial epoch ; but which, if it was worth anything as an argument when no such interruption was thought of, should be equally good for an Atlantis after it ; and that is, that the number of the species of plants which occur in Eastern Asia diminishes as we proceed westwards. Mr. M'Clelland makes an observation to a similar effect as regards the animals of Assam ; his catalogue of them displaying an interesting balance numerically in favour of the extension of species from the eastward.* As to plants, out of 1550, which is the number of Japanese phaenogamous species known up to this time, Dr. Gray has pointed out that, supposing them to have been spread in the direction and from the point specified, by the time they reach Europe they are reduced to 157 ; by the time they come to Eastern North America they only number 134 ; and when they get so far as Western North America we find only 120 species. The inference from this, of course, is that there was a highway open to the plants all the way round the world from Japan to California ; and that as they got further and further on their journey, species kept dropping off until, when they reached its end, only 120 species remained out of 1550. The idea is plausible at first sight, but a little consideration will serve to show that the distribution of species in North America has in reality nothing to do with that in Europe and Asia, but that they are the results of two totally different trains of action. It is plain that if they were part of the same train of action, they must bear a relative proportion to each other. If 1550 species are reduced to 157 in journeying to Europe — say 7000 miles — they ought to have suffered a further proportionate decrease by the time they have reached America, and a still greater by the time they have reached California. Does that rate correspond with the results above given ? Here they are compared : — LOSS PROPORTIONATE ACTUAL LOSS OUT OF 1550. TO THE DISTANCES. From Japan to Central Europe, say 7000 miles — 1393=one in every five miles . 1393 From Central Europe to Newfoundland, 3000 miles, 23 600 From Newfoundland to California, . 4000 miles, 13 . . . . . . 800 In other words, according to that ratio the whole should have been extinguished before they had well left Europe ; the 157 left would not suffice to carry them across the Atlantic, even starting from the west coast of Ireland. In the first 7000 miles, the missing amounted to 1363, in the second only to 36 ; a result too extravagant to be seriously looked at, and yet not even so bad as it really should be, because no allowance has been made for the increased ratio of loss which we should expect to be consequent on increased distance from home. The real cause of the similarity of the floras of Eastern Asia and America is probably that both started from a similar basis. In the miocene time one flora inhabited Europe, Asia, and America. The glacial cold all but destroyed it in Europe, but in North America it found a refuge in the south-west, and in Asia the distribution of land and water shows that its refuge there must have been mainly in the south-east — not in the Malayan south-east, which was cut off from Northern Asia — but in the south-cast of Northern Asia ; in other words, Japan and the north of China. The floras preserved in Asia and America would, of course, undergo different * M'Clelland, Catalogue of Animals in Assam in " Annals of Natural History." THE GLACIAL EPOCII. 47 changes as they spread further and further from their starting-point, but in both those left at their starting-point should be nearest the original miocene type from which they have descended without undergoing the chances of change of form incident to change of place. As regards modified species which may have found their way from Asia to America, or, vice versa, the difference in their proportion in East and West America is to be sought for in the com paratively insular position of the latter, . fenced off, as I have shown, by seas to the west, to the greater part of the east, and also probably to the north. Hence East America, although furthest from Asia, received the Asiatic species first, and West America only received them by regurgita tion from the East. Before leaving the consideration of the effect of the glacial epoch, I should wish to notice an ingenious, cosmical speculation, in relation to it, which has recently been propounded. That epoch plays too important a part in questions relating to the geographical distribution of plants and animals, to allow us to disregard as extraneous any views relating to it. I there fore make no apology to the reader for detaining him for a few minutes while we look into this hypothesis and endeavour to estimate it at its real value. The speculation to which I refer is that lately made by Mr. Croll* in which he ascribes some of the phenomena of the glacial epoch to the disturbance of the centre of gravity of the earth. That gentleman has suggested that the submergence of the land in the north which is believed to have followed the termination of the glacial epoch may have been due to a disturbance or alteration of the centre of gravity of the earth, consequent on the enormous weight of ice accumulated at the North Pole during that epoch. Mr. Jamiesonf had already suggested that the earth's crust may have yielded under the weight of the ice, and so caused the submergence ; but Mr. Croll, while he also refers the result to the weight of the ice, argues, that instead of the earth sinking, the water, in adjusting itself to a different centre of gravity, overflowed part of the land. Mr. Croll says, " The surface of the ocean always adjusts itself in relation to the earth's centre of gravity, no matter what the form of the solid mass of earth may happen to be. Now if a portion of the water of the ocean be converted into solid ice, and placed, for example, around the northern polar regions, it will necessarily change the position of the earth's centre of gravity. The centre of gravity will be removed a little to the north of its former position. The water of the ocean will then forsake the old centre, and adjust itself in relation to the new. The surface of the ocean will, therefore, rise towards the North Pole, and fall towards the South ; in other words, there will be in relation to the sea-level a depression of the land on the northern hemisphere, and an elevation on the southern. The extent of the rise of the ocean, level, or, what is equally the same, the extent of the submergence, will be in proportion to the weight of the ice-sheet. The weight, or the size, of the ice-sheet being known, we can determine with the utmost certainty the extent of the submergences ; or controverscly, the extent of the submergence being known we can determine both the weight and the size of the ice-sheet. It is singular why physicists should not have perceived the physical impossibility of an ice-sheet, several thousands of feet in thickness being placed upon the northern hemisphere, still retaining its former level in relation to this land, unless the ice-sheets be counterbalanced by one of equal weight placed upon the southern hemisphere. But this leads to another result. The submergence of the land during the glacial epoch leads to the conclusion that the glaciation was not contem- * See Letter in "Eeader," Aug. 1865. t Jameson, in " Quart. Journ. of Geology," xviii. 170, and xix. 235. 48 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. poraneous on both hemispheres. If the ice-sheet had covered both hemispheres, the earth's centre of gravity, and consequently the ocean-level, would have remained unaffected. The submergence of the land is therefore another confirmation of the truth of the theory, which attributes the glacial epoch to excentricity of the earth's orbit ; for, as you are aware, if the glacial epoch had been due to the excentricity, the glaciation could have extended to only one hemisphere at a time. One hemisphere would have been covered with snow and ice, while the other would have been enjoying a perpetual spring. " A glacial epoch resulting from the excentricity of the earth's orbit would extend over 100,000 years. But owing to the precession of the equinoxes and the revolution of the apsides the glaciation would be transferred from the one hemisphere to the other every 10,000 years or so. A glacial epoch extending over 100,000 years would therefore be broken up with five or six warm periods. A warm period on the one hemisphere would be contemporaneous with a cold period on the other. Under these circumstances we ought to have elevation of the land during the warm periods, and submergence during the cold. The land ought to have stood higher than at present during some periods of the glacial epoch as well as lower. This, again, is in agreement with geological facts. That the cold of the glacial epoch was not continuous, but was broken up by comparatively warm periods, when the ice to a considerable extent at least disappeared, I think has been clearly proved by Morlot, Geikie, and others, from the stratified beds of sand clay and gravel, old water courses and striated ' pavements ' which have been found in the true boulder clay." As regard's the glacial epoch being the result of the excentricity of the earth's orbit, there is much that is attractive in the idea. It would explain many puzzling facts, and others which appear inconsistent with it might be explained away or reconciled to it. For example, it may be said if that is a true explanation the glacial epoch should return periodically, and that this has been so we have no evidence. But the heat of the earth until the glacial epoch may have been sufficient to have enabled it to have endured the cold with only a slight alteration of temperature, sufficient to make such a change of condition as I require for the development of new species, but nothing so great as to produce an extinction of life on any part of the globe : of course it would be less and less felt the further back we go in the history of the earth. There are, however, some facts apparently opposed to it, which I do not at present see any means of explaining away. The excentricity of the earth's orbit would produce its effect at regular periods, always the same, and at each of these periods marks of its presence should be left — the mark of its presence which I would require would of course be more or less an important change in the types of animal and vegetable life. These we have, but they do net recur at the right times, some being separated by longer periods than others. Then, again, the necessary assumption that the cold did not extend to both hemispheres at the same time seems inconsistent with some facts which we shall have to consider as we go along; more especially the close affinity of the Arctic and Antarctic whalebone whales, whose ancestors could never have passed from the one Polo to the other, unless the cold extended over the whole earth to such a degree as to render the equatorial seas tolerably cold, or unless the constitution of these whales was something very different from that of their descendants. Mr. Croll next goes on to speculate on the thickness and weight of the ice-sheet, and the extent of the effect it would produce. "It has been proved by Mr. Jamieson that in 6ome parts of Scotland the ice-sheets must have been at least 3000 feet Uiick. Agassiz thinks that in some parts of North America its THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 49 thickness could not have been less than a mile ; the thickness of the ice in Scandinavia and other parts of northern Europe must have been enormous." He therefore assumes that it was 7000 feet thick at the North Pole, diminishing in thickness towards the Equator, according to a law, into the consideration of which we need not here enter, so that the upper surface of the sheet should curve exactly the same as the land beneath, and ends by bringing out the result that this distribution of ice would have the effect of producing a total submergence of 1000 feet at the North Pole, and a elevation (emergence) of 1000 feet at the South Pole, and of course a lesser accumulation of ice would produce a correspondingly lesser amount of submergence and emergence. Now this hypothesis depends upon several assumptions the withdrawal of any of which would be fatal to it. There must have been a vast accumulation of ice in the northern hemisphere, and it must have been thickest towards the Pole ; there must have been not one submergence but several ; and these must have taken place during the continuance of the glacial epoch. Now, first as to the ice ; is there any reason for supposing that at the present time it increases in thickness as we approach the Pole ? I have not met with any statement to that effect ; and if the voyagers who have penetrated furthest had observed any indication of its becoming so they would surely have mentioned it. But both from their sketches and descriptions it appears that the ice and glaciers continued of the same thickness as they advanced to the north. Into this question, the dimensions and extent of mountain glaciers, such as those of the Alps, do not enter. The inferences of Venetz and Charpentier as to the immense extent of these may be perfectly correct ; but it does not follow that their height must have been correspondingly great. They are, however, exceptional and detached, and do not affect the case of the general mass of polar ice. Of course in the case of sea ice it would probably be of a greater depth the further north we go and the greater the cold there is ; but that is nothing to the purpose, for ice is lighter than water, and an addition to its depth would not add to its weight. It is only by accumulation above the level of the sea that additional weight could be produced. As no one has reached the Pole we cannot tell from observation what is the case there, but we may reason from analogy as to what should be found there. If we assume that the cold becomes more intense the nearer we approach the Pole, it by no means follows that there should be more ice there. All the ice of these regions comes from snow. Snow is produced by warm vapour-bearing clouds or atmosphere coming in contact with cold air. It never falls when the thermometer is much below 32° Fahr. The vapour-laden warm air which has risen from the tropics and ascended above the colder temperate atmosphere on meeting the frozen air of the Arctic regions, deposits its vapour in the shape of snow. It is, therefore, always on the boundary, of the eternal ice that snow will be deposited. The Pole itself should be clear from fogs, or vapour, or snow. How far the direct heat of the sun might have some effect in producing them during the short summer we cannot tell ; but we know that that is not the origin of the snows which fall elsewhere. It comes from the source already mentioned. Increase of snow and ice should therefore be always at the outer margin of the polar ice ; when there is no yearly increase in the cold, when it is standing water between heat and cold, there will be little increase in the breadth or thickness of the ice, for the heat of summer will melt away the increase of winter. But when the cold is on the increase, as when the glacial epoch came on, its last year's gain would not be melted away indeed, but still there would be no increase of snow or ice in the interior, it would be always at the outer margin that the increase would go on ; and the effect of increased cold would be, not to pile up more ice upon that which already H 50 PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES. existed, but to advance the margin towards the equator ; and all that the margin would gain in increase would be the few years' accumulation which might have fallen before it was left behind in the interior by the general advance of the margin towards the tropics. The glacial ice, according to my view therefore, never was thicker than it is now in Greenland and the Polar Seas. Of course, if I am wrong in my reasoning as to the deposit of snow in the Polar regions, and if the analogy of what is now to be seen in the Polar regions, can be disregarded or explained away, I then must abandon my position and acknowledge that here is no limiting power but time to the thickness winch the sheet ice may have attained during the glacial epoch. I would only say in that case, that I am astonished at the moderation of Agassiz and his followers in limiting it to a mile. The rate at which the glaciers of the Alps move (from several inches to a foot or two in the twenty-four hours) indicates a rate of increase at the upper end of many feet during the year ; for although they are, as it were, the outlets of large lakes of ice, and consequently their rate of movement is no guide as to the amount of snow which may have fallen on every square foot : still considering how much is lost by melting, the rate of movement shows that the increase is very great ; or, if wc merely reckon all the rain that falls during the year in our own country, which would then of course all be snow, and estimate the depth of ice as equal to that of the rainfall it will be a very low estimate to take that at a foot in the year ; and if we then take Mr. Croll's reduced datinn of only 10,000 years' continuance of cold without a break, we should on that ratio have a thickness about two miles in height. Or if the alternative proposition of no breaks of warmth be adopted, and his 100,000 years be accepted as the limit of time, the thickness on the same ratio would reach twenty miles in height. Again, as to the repeated or alternate submergencies and elevations during the continuance of the glacial epoch, this, no doubt, may have been, but it can scarcely be called more than a conjecture. All that can bo said of the facts to which Mr. Croll alludes as in some degree supporting this idea is, that they are not irreconcilable with it. They are as consistent with the subsidence (which all admit) having taken place subsequent to the retreat of the ice as during its sub sistence. The evidence of subsidence, such as that of beds containing shells being found overlying the drift, points to a date subsequent to the cessation of the chief rigour of the glacial epoch, and some of them indicate the laj)se of long periods of time between its close and the submer gence. The old watercourses and striated pavements found by Mr. Geikie in the drift, speak neither for nor against submergence, but are so far in favour of a break in the intensity of the cold, although they do not necessarily prove this. They may have arisen while the ground where they occur formed part of the outer margin of ice, and vibrated between advance and retreat. In our own times, without any apparent alteration in our climate, an immense barrier of ice, which had surrounded the east coast of Greenland for four centuries, broke up in the year 1816, and in that and the following year disappeared from the coast. Its disruption and re- growth might simulate some of the phenomena referred to by Mr. Croll. Lastly, if the elevation or transference of mountain chains and vast continents from one hemisphere to another, failed to disturb the centre of gravity of the earth, the existence of such a quantity of ice as it seems reasonable to admit the existence of, could have had still less influence especially if the balance of the earth were preserved by both Poles being refrigerated at the same time. 51 CHAPTER VI. MAMMALS CLASSIFICATION AND MUTUAL AFFINITIES. Starting with the principles which I have laid down in the previous chapters, and by which I mean to be guided throughout the remainder of this work, the affinity of species becomes of vital importance to our whole inquiry ; and not merely the simple question, whether this or that species be allied or not, but the degree of affinity, becomes almost as necessary to be known. While it is indisputable that two different species starting on the career of change at the same time, and from the same terminus, can never be expected to make equal progress in their journey, as one will certainly outstrip the other, still it is equally clear that when they do not start simultaneously, those which have started first ought to have the advantage on the whole. Thus we can hardly escape from the conclusion that when we find two animals both apparently derived from the same stock, but one more removed from its typical character than the other, that one dates its connexion with it from the more distant period of time. The reader will see how important such indications may be when questions arise as to the relative antiquity of the separation of different lands, or their alternate separation and reunion. No work can deal satisfactorily with geographical distribution which does not take a large account of questions of affinity. A few words upon the chief difficulties which meet us in our attempts to classify the animal kingdom, and more particularly, mammals, will therefore be a fitting preamble to the details on which we are about to enter. Assuming that species are derived, the one from the other, the most perfect system of classification would of course be simply a genealogical tree showing the descent of each. The materials for making such a tree are, however, beyond our reach. The records that have been kept in the pages of geological strata, are imperfect and interrupted, and we do not even know that we can always read the language ; and of by far the greater portion no record has been preserved at all. All that we can do, therefore, is by the study of the anatomy and physiology of those living species to which we have access, to endeavour to ascertain their affinities, and to make up a fictitious tree, in the best way we can from the materials we possess. The genealogical form of classification has, however, this disadvantage, that we can at no rate, and by no possible contrivance, squeeze it into a linear arrangement. Each species requires a separate tree for itself. Scarcely one of all the thousands of species inhabiting the globe can come into the same arrangement with another, for if two appeared in the same genealogy, one of them must either be the parent or descendant of the other, and the cases in which there is the least reason for supposing that this has been the case with living species, are few in the extreme. But although this be the case with individual species, it is not necessarily so with larger groups ; 52 MAMMALS. a group from which another has sprung may still subsist in its descendants ; some groups may be very old, others quite modern, always supposing that the groups really do exist in nature, and are homogeneous, and may be treated as entities. If we may so treat them, the best substitute for a linear arrangement is to have as few and as short, separate, and independent lines of classification or descent as possible. But may we look upon such groups, families, or orders, as separate and independent existences ? or, like genera, are they merely artificial aids to memory and arrangement. It appears to me that they are in many respects more real than modern genera. In the first place, the different orders (or, to prevent all dispute as to what an order really is, let us say some of the different groups) are undoubtedly veiy homogeneous. " In all the instances of approach of species of one order to other orders," says Mr. Waterhouse, in speaking of the classification of the different orders in one of the best of his many excellent papers, " there is not a single case which would fairly bear out the notion that these orders imperceptibly blend into each other. There is always a tolerably well marked line between them. The aberrant Bpecies are readily traced back as it were into their own groups, and when they evince an approach to other circles it is rather to the order than to any particular species of the order."* In the next place, a species is something separate and distinct, which, although composed of many items, is still only a unit. This, I think, is an inevitable corollary to the hypothesis that new species come into existence in one body of many individuals. If we could believe the same of orders we should be relieved from some of the most difficult questions attending the origin of species. In mammals, one of these is the relation which subsists between certain Marsupials which represent in that order equivalent groups of placental Mammals, and the difficulty arises in attempt ing to ascertain the respective origin of these Dromios. The Marsupials have many claims to be considered one of the oldest, if not the oldest, order of Mammals. The following table of the sequence in which Mammals have appeared on the earth, shows in a general way (without taking into account disputed or exceptional cases) their relative priority, so far as geology has been able to determine it. Geological Epochs. Recent Pliocene M iocene Upper Eocene Orders of Mammals. Man (?) Monkeys — Proboscoid Pachyderms (Elephants) — Edentata, (Megatheria, &c.) Insectivora (Shrews, Sec.) — Rodents (Rats, &c1. — Ruminants — Whales Lower Eocene Bats — Tapyroid Pachyderms — Carnivora Secondary for mations Marsupials * Waterhouse, On The Classification of the Mammalia in " Annals of Nat. Hist." Vol. xii. p. 399. 1843. CLASSIFICATION. 53 This is not worth much, the record being so very imperfect, from the greater part of the earth being now under water, or having been in ancient times above water, and hence having furnished few or no organic remains. But such as it is, it gives us the Marsupials (with a questionable trace of Inscctivora) as the first Mammals which appeared on the face of the earth. In addition to the geological reasons for believing in their early appearance, the fact of their structure being lowest in the scale of Mammalian life is an important fact, for although there is no doubt that steps are taken by nature both backwards and forwards, as well as to the right and to the left, still her general course has been forwards, — her motto has always been "Excelsior," — and the chances are thus in favour of the lowest having appeared first. The admirable system of classification (admirable from the point of view of organization) founded by Professor Owen, chiefly, although by no means wholly, on the characters of the brain,* seems to place it beyond doubt that the relative position of the Marsupials is at the bottom of the list, and that the place of the Rodents and Insectivora is next to them. At any rate that one or other of these three is oldest. If the Marsupials are not the oldest, then the choice lies between the Insectivora and the Rodents, the claim of the former being strongest on geological grounds, of the latter on structural, and both (if we reckon the Bats as Insectivores) as being the only placental inhabitants found in Australia along with the Marsupials ; the equivalent relations above referred to being also much stronger with them than with any other order. These equivalent groups are of two kinds. One displays relations of analogy which have been thought to typify different orders of placentals ; as, for example, the pedimanous and frugivorous opossums are supposed to have foreshadowed the pedimanous frugivorous monkeys ; the marsupial .hyena or tiger (Thylacinus) our common carnivora ; the wombat, the rodents ; the kangaroo, the ruminants ; the koala, the phytophagous sun-bear ; the phascogales, the shrews ; the Echidna and Myrmecobius, the ant-eater. This relation shows parallelism of internal structure, but little external resemblance. .The cow has a complicated digestive apparatus ; so has the kangaroo. Both are her bivorous; herbivorous animals require a more elaborate apparatus for digestion than carnivorous (which have a great part of the business of assimilation from vegetable to animal tissues already done to their hand), therefore both are supplied with suitable machinery for the purpose; it is not the same, but so far alike as is necessary. So with their dentition ; in both it is adapted for grinding vegetable matter, but it is not the same. As to external appearance, on the other hand, they are totally void of resemblance. This kind of analogy is more of the nature of homology than of close affinity. The other analogy is of a different character. It is a close personal resemblance promising abso lute identity throughout, but not fulfilling the promise. The frontispiece is an illustration of this sort of resemblance. It is a representation of Antechinus minutissimus and Mus delicattjixs, two Australian Mammals, copied, by Mr. Gould's permission, from figures in his magnificent work on the Mammals of Australia. The one belongs to the order of marsupials, the other does not ; the one has rodent dentition, the other has not ; and yet, as the reader sees, the two are so identical in outward appearance, that, on a hasty inspection the most experienced naturalist might be deceived, and might set them down as two species of mice. The same thing happens with oilier species of rodents; — the flying Marsupial Petaurus is a close counterpart, in outward appearance, of some of the flying squirrels. One or two of the Phascooales, or Antechini, resemble * Owen, in " Proceedings of Linnean Society," vol. ii. p. i. 1857. 54 MAMMALS. the jerboa. Peragalea LAGoTIS has considerable resemblance to a hare, and carries its habits as well as its cars — making a form in the grass like it. The 'Wombat has been compared to the beaver, or capybara ; but there is not sufficient actual similarity of appearance in them to suit the purpose for which I refer to these analogies. Now let us take two (the two most striking, of course) of these resemblances, — two will answer as well as a dozen. Let us take the mice and the flying squirrels as opposed to the Anteciuni and Petauri. All inhabit the same quarter of the world (New Guinea and Australia), and have special ordinal structure — that is, a structure which is found in the whole of the order to which each belongs, and which, therefore, may be assumed to bo of primary importance and essential in character. The two first have the rodent dentition, and not the marsupial structure ; the two last have the marsupial structure, but not the rodent dentition. Can these so similar species have descended the one from the other ? Any one looking at the frontispiece would say that the animals there represented must have done so ; that such close external resemblance is impossible on any other supposition. Assume it to be so, both with the mice and the flying squirrels, for if it be so with the one, the same rule must hold with the other — we should then have two animals independently of each other, making the same change, both from a marsupial structure to a rodent, or from a Todent to a marsupial. This is, I think, impossible. Nature never repeats herself. Had it been that the one changed to a rodent, and the other to something else — that might be — but both from the same and to the same is opposed to all that we know either of the laws of nature or of the doctrines of chance. Therefore, so far as the question is the origin of species from a single progenitor, I feel con strained to admit that it cannot be. But may not the whole order of marsupials, or of rodents; or a part of the order embracing those instances where close resemblance exists, have received in one body the impulse of change from marsupial to rodent, or from rodent to marsupial, as I think there is reason to hold is the case in whole bodies of individuals composing a species ? That is an explanation which appears to me to have some germ of truth. But the difficulties do not cease here. We have taken the two orders, Marsupials and Rodents, as in pari casu, and looked at the question of the derivation of these similar species from one or other, as if either might be indifferently the oldest ; but one or other must be the elder — they could scarcely be twins, — or triplets if we take in the Inscctivora. But might they not be the children of different parents ? Is it absolutely necessary that all Mammals should spring from one progenitor or parent stock ? May they not have sprung from different stocks — the bat from the pterodactyles ; the duck-bill, or ornithorhynchus, from birds ; the whale from the ichthyosaurus, and the general mass of Mammals from terrestrial reptiles? — or have the whole four classes of Yertebrata (mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes) been developed into being successively in descent, not one from the other, but from some ancestor common to them all ? All these inquiries are involved in the argument whether there is such a thing as an order : and if so, whether more than one part or member of it can receive simultaneously the same new impress, as appears to be the case in species. If this were possible, then I incline to think that it may have been the mode in which the orders of Mammals came into being ; but if that hypothesis must be excluded, then wo are driven to the conclusion that each class, order, or natural group, started from some one parent species, into which had been drawn, as into one focus, all the different rays of previous form which were afterwards dispersed among the equivalent types which sprung from it. MUTUAL AFFINITIES. 55 If we must take this as the course of Nature, it will then bo most in accordance with the preponderance of evidence to admit the Marsupials to be the parent from which all the other Mammals have descended. The Rodents would come next — indeed, we are not without some grounds for considering them first. But this would not affect our classification materially. If they came first, they gave off the Marsupial as a side branch, which has gone no further ; and they then went on to the development of the other orders. If they did not come first, but descended from the Marsupials, they left them behind, standing still, and proceeded as in the other case. Whether the Monotremes cannot be treated as an exception, being scarcely Marsupials, and be regarded as the direct source of the Edentates (ant-eaters, &c.) is another question involved in doubt. From the Rodents would then spring two antagonistic organizations — the carnivorous and the herbivorous, a partition of a bifold principle embodied in the Rodent itself — some of them like the rat, being both vegetable and flesh- feeders. The Insectivores under our supposed case would be the first of the flesh-feeders. The lower monkeys, Prosimije, I would, with M. Gratiolet, refer directly to the Insectivores. From them also I would draw the Carnivores ; and from the Carnivores, the monkeys and man. Reverting to the herbivorous section of the Rodents, there seems more direct evidence of the descent of the Pachyderms from them (as through the Toxodon, the Capybara or Hyrax,) than is accessible for most other groups. From the Pachyderms to the Ruminants and Sea Cows follows, as a natural step. The whales are generally supposed to be drawn from the same source, but their location is attended with peculiar difficulty. In all this, however, there is a. multitude of objections, puzzles, and contradictions, which can only be got over by an amount of reconciling and explaining away which appears to me to bo quite an exception to the usual simplicity of truth. This remark, however, only applies to the orders and general mass of typical forms, each taken as a whole. When we come to deal with the individual species of the different groups, their affinities to each other are generally simple and clear ; and this inclines me to think that we have probably reached the truth in the one case, and not in the other. In the meantime, however, feeling no confidence in any plan of descent which I can suggest, I shall, in the main, follow the system of classification of Mammals laid down by Professor Owen ; merely deviating from it in those points on which I have formed a decided opinion of my own in opposition to his conclusions, although derived from the same premises. That arrangement proposed by Professor Owen will be found in the Appendix, along with those of Cuvier, Milne Edwards, and other eminent naturalists. The modification of it, which I have adopted, has been given at the commencement of this volume, coupled with a table of the first geological formations in which remains of the different orders and families have been discovered. Before leaving this subject I would wish to draw the reader's attention to one noteworthy inference to be drawn from the course of descent, whichever view be adopted ; and that is, the excessive rarity of any important change in the form or structure of animal life. When we think of the extraordinary prolificness of nature, of the vast diversity of form and organization scattered all over the globe, we are apt to imagine that the changes must have been frequent. But on more carefid inquiry we see that at the utmost only three or four important changes have succeeded each other in any one direction from the first appearance of Mammals, down to the present day. Taking all the orders together, and including the small changes in each, their number is beyond reckoning ; but, looking at important changes of type, the number is as I have stated. -><; CHAPTER VII. DISTRIBUTION OF MAN BLACK AND WHITE RACES. The races of man as defined in most of our works on Ethnology are six, — the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the American, the Ethiopian, the Malayan, and the Australasian. To these many add a seventh, the Papuan or Oceanic. Although this division maintains its place, it does so more from the difficulty of finding a satisfactory substitute, than from any general assent to its propositions. It appears to be unsupported by any argument or consideration beyond this, that in each of the countries allotted to these seven sections, certain different tribes or races of mankind are found ; but that they are all of equal value, or that no other varieties can be pointed to showing as marked distinctions between them as some of the above, no one who has thought on the subject will affirm. For example, is there no more difference between a Mongolian and an Englishman than there is between an Englishman and a Negro ? Most people would say that the Mongolian was half-way between the European and the Negro. I shall, I think, presently show that he i.« greatly less than half-way towards the Negro ; but assuming for the nonce that he is half-way, what kind of system of arrangement is that, which places the race which stands half-way between two others on the same footing and equality as those which are separated the whole way ? Or if races showing lesser degrees of difference are to be associated with, and placed on the same platform as those more widely separated, why are not all minor sections to be taken into account too ? It seems plain that the present usual scheme of classification is erroneous, both in principle and in application. The opinion which I have formed is, that there arc no more than two great divisions of man kind, equal in value and marked by characteristics of equal importance, each of which again is divisible into an indefinite multitude of smaller sections. Speaking roughly, these two great races may be distinguished as the Blacks and the Whites. Map 6 will show the territory which I think is occupied by each, and the following is the line of reasoning by which I have arrived at this conclusion. If wo begin our survey at the North Pole, we find one race of men (the Esquimaux) inhabiting the first habitable land all around it. The Esquimaux in Greenland, the Esquimaux at Baffin's Bay, the Esquimaux at Bhering's Straits, and the Esquimaux in the North of Asia, are one and the same. In this respect, the facts with regard to man correspond with those of other organized beings. The faunas and floras* of all the countries around the Pole are nearly the same. * The words Fauna and Flora are now naturalized common use, especially names of plants ; and I take the English, and being so it would be a mistake to speak of opportunity, once for all, to claim the right to treat all th?m in the plural as Faunae and Flora. The same re- such words as English, and to give them English plural mark applies to a multitude of other scientific words in terminations when Rpeaking of them in that number. IjO 160 ISO 140 I3ti rio no toe so st m m so « ZO 10 MAP VI . SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF MAN. White reuse . Black rare . i ; i : ; I WO J.50 AK' i.U■ 1-U) ill' HV LAM* I • oaHHtrs Ml 70 dO SO 40 30 ?« 10 rO JO 60 70 SO jkl 100 110 120 1,10 140 ISO IS) 170 o c X H N \t,V i0 »i 40 SO 60 70 So 90 no no ao no iso mo no n_.0.c i s.„ DISTRIBUTION OF MAN. 57 Taking the East of Bhering's Straits, and passing southwards into America, we see the Esqui maux imperceptibly changed into the North American Indians. The Chinooks, and other northern tribes nearest the Esquimaux, cannot be distinguished from them ; and the tribes next to them on the south again pass insensibly into the red-skinned tribes of middle North America. These pass into the digger tribes of California, which have in their turn many of the characteristics of the tribes of Central and South America, and all attempts to elevate the tribes of South American Indians into separate races, have long since been abandoned. In short, it is now universally acknowledged, that the whole of both North and South America, from the Arctic Sea to Tierra del Fuego, has been peopled by one race. The physical characters, the traditions, the linguistic affinities of the different tribes, white, red, yellow, copper, and brown skins, all bear one stamp. We are compelled, therefore, to receive them as one, and that one identical with the inhabitants of the Arctic regions. Returning to Bhering's Straits again, and turning westward, we find the Esquimaux amal gamated with the Samoiedes and Tunguseans of North - Eastern Asia, who in their turn pass into the Mongolians on the south ; and so strong is the affinity of the Esquimaux with these tribes, that not long since, apropos to two North American Esquimaux who visited the United State*, and were the subject of examination and ethnological speculation, Dr. Pickering, whom no one will accuse of an undue tendency to diminish the number of races, stated that there could not be a doubt that they were Mongolian.* If the American Indian is an Esquimaux, and the Esquimaux is a Mongolian, the Mongol must be an American Indian too. Additional confirmation of this view is furnished by the Mongol features cropping up in other unexpected places in America ; for example, in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.f But to proceed further. Does anyone propose to erect the Tartars into more than a tribe of the Mongolians ? No : — and it is only when, in passing westward, we reach the Caucasus, that ethnologists have seen evidences of a distinct — the European — race. And what are these? — not linguistic peculiarities, for the Sanscrit is the root of all the languages of Europe and Northern Asia ; as little physical structure, for the beautiful Georgian, whose almond-shaped and somewhat oblique eye proclaims descent from the Mongols, can scarcely be separated from the Circassian of the neighbouring mountains. The Laps and Fins are Esquimaux according to some, Mongols according to others ; they are both, and Caucasians into the bargain. The Tartarian extraction Of the Russian peasant is scarcely disputed, " Grades le Russe," said Napoleon, " et vow en trouverez le Tartar /" neither is there any room to raise up a wall of division between the Russian and the Pole, or the Russian and Slavonian. In fact, there is no point at which a line can be drawn, separating the Englishman from the Tartar, as types of great races. Not as tribes, families, or sections ; there is no difficulty in distinguishing these, any more than there is in distinguishing between the Scotsman and the Englishman — the Gael and the Lowlander — * "Dr. Pickering referred to two Esquimaux now on with one minor exception, America was originayll peopled exhibition in this city. From their low stature, florid from the north-west by the sea-going tribes following the complexion, broad, flat countenance, with the profile very coast, personal inspection now satisfied him that the Es- slightly projecting, one would be disposed to reject the quimaux are Mongolians, and that there is no distinct idea of affinity with the general aboriginal population of physical race of man in the Arctic regions." — Proceed- this continent. But the sea-going tribes of north-west ings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. ix. America, of which he had seen the Chinooks, are inter- p. 182. (April, 18G3.) mediate in aspect, having very generally a lighter com- t Seethe portraits of a Patagonian in "Wilkes' Voyage," plexion and less prominence of profile than the interior or and of " Jemmy Button," (especially that in sailor's dress), hunting tribes. In addition to his published opinion, that, in Fitzroy*s " Voyage of the Beagle." I 58 MAMMALS. the Irishman and the Kentish yeoman. All aro tribes which have acquired, from force of cha racter, locality, physical conditions of life, or other circumstances, features or dispositions, to a certain extent, distinctive ; but as great original races, they cannot be distinguished one from the other. Next to the Mongol tribes, we have the Chinese and Japanese, which have no claims to more than tribal distinction ; distinct races they are not. Of the Hindoos, Major-General Briggs truly says : — " The Hindus are universally acknowledged to be of that branch of the human family denominated by Blumenbach Caucasian, and they believe they invaded India from the north-west."* Neither are the Affghans and Persians any thing more than tribes, and as little are the Greeks, Turks, Egyptians, and Arabs of the shores of the Mediterranean. The Malays, or brown tribes of the Indian Archipelago, are farther separated than any of the rest from the other inhabitants of the continents of Asia and Europe ; and if any third race, besides the whites and the blacks, is to be admitted, it should be the Malays. Still, there are points of affinity between them and the Chinese and other Mongolian tribes which prevent their being so received. There is as much difference between the South American Indian of the Amazons, and many of the tribes of North American Indians, as there is between the Malay and the Chinese; and if we retain the two former as one, in defiance of their physical dissimilarity, on what parity of reasoning can we separate the two latter ? I regard the Malays as merely one of the many offshoots or tributaries of the great white race. Now there is one thing to be observed regarding all the lands and people over which we have cast our eyes, viz. that they are conterminous and continuous ; and not only so now, but if we 'suppose the northern hemisphere to be sunk one hundred fathoms (as shown in Map 2), even then there is easy communication between all the unsunk portions of this great extent of land. The Straits of Bhering are sufficiently near to furnish such a people as the Esquimaux with an easy means of transit from one continent to the other at any time ; and there is no other physical barrier of any kind to interrupt the progress of man from Cape Horn to Singapore. No doubt Ceylon is separated from India ; and Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, all of which are inhabited by the Malay stock, are separated from Siam and China by straits and seas ; but these are narrow, and would form no obstacle to the passage of a moderately maritime people, and in addition, a rise of the land to the extent of 100 fathoms would unite the whole of these islands with the continent (see Map 1). As already said, however, in the East, after we reach the south-eastern extremity of Borneo, the shallow seas give place to an unfathomable ocean, out of which spring lands, which, although comparatively near in point of distance, and without geological distinction, bear a different fauna, a different flora, and a different race of men. These two regions are separated from each other by the Straits of Macassar and the Straits of Lombock ; Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and the Malayan Archipelago, lying on the one hand ; Celebes, Gilolo, New Guinea, and Australia, on the other. It seems a reasonable inferenco from these facts, that Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, have been connected at some former period with each other and the mainland, while Celebes, New Guinea, and the neighbouring islands, have never been connected with them, or at least have been separated from them for a long period. The former countries, says Mr. Wallace in a recent paper on the subject, "are, in fact, still connected, and that so completely, that an * Briggs on the Aboriginal Tribes of India, in " Reports of British Assoc." 1850, p. 160. DISTRIBUTION OK MAN. 59 elevation of only 300 feet would nearly double the extent of tropical Asia. Over the whole of the Java Sea, the Straits of Malacca, the Gulf of Siam, and the southern part of the China sea, ships can anchor in less than fifty fathoms. A vast submarine plain unites together the apparently disjointed parts of the Indian zoological region, and abruptly terminates exactly at its limits in un unfathomable ocean. The deep sea of the Moluccas comes up to the very coasts of Northern Borneo, to the Strait of Lombock in the south, and to near the middle of the Strait of Macassar.* May we not, therefore, from these facts very fairly conclude that, according to the system of alternate bands of elevation and depression, which seems very generally to prevail, the last great rising movement of the volcanic range of Java and Sumatra was accompanied by the depression that now separates them from Borneo, and from the Continent ?"f The fauna and flora of the Malayan islands, too, is closely allied to the fauna of the neigh bouring continent. The elephant, rhinoceros, and tapir, found in Sumatra, are also found in Southern Asia. Every family, most of the genera and many of the species of birds and insects, which are found on these islands, are also to be met with on the continent. On the other hand, the species found in New Guinea, Celebes, and the islands to the east and south, are of a totally different type, in many respects distinct and peculiar to themselves, but in others showing Australian affinities. .Reasoning from these facts, geologists have conceived that while Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the Philippine Islands, are parts of Asia separated from it at no distant period, Celebes, Timor, the Moluccas, New Guinea, and Australia, are remnants of a vast submerged continent, traces of the existence of which appear in the coral islands of the Pacific Ocean, and in the affinities * It is perhaps right to say that it is not to be considered as absolutely settled, that the Straits of Mac assar are of great depth all through. The western or Malayan side is shallow all along the coast of Borneo. The soundings which have been taken show great depth on the cast, both to the north and south, but in the centre an equal depth is not so well ascertained. In the largest and most detailed map of soundings which has been published, viz. that by Jacob Swartz, the soundings taken at the middle of the straits gradually increase on the western side from fourteen to thirty-five fathoms, and a few scattered soundings in mid-channel are noted where the depth varies from twenty to forty fathoms : these are continued until within about ten miles of the coast of Celebes, when no more are recorded. One is apt to suppose on seeing this, that a bank of from twenty to forty fathoms in depth extends across the middle part of the straits ; but in the first place the want of soundings for ten miles across on the side where we know the water to be deepest, and where a little to the north and south no soundings are to be had with a hundred-fathom line, prevent us assuming this ; and in the next place, on personal inquiry at Mr. Wal lace, he assures me of his firm conviction that there is deep water there as well as on each side of it, and informs me that the scattered sounding.3 to which I have referred are not to be taken as indicating the general depth around the spot marked, but merely the depth at the particu lar spot, usually a reef or a sand-bank, where they occur He had met with residents who remembered the taking of these soundings, and they informed him that the way in which the officer who was charged with the duty pro ceeded was this : ho allowed his vessel to drift about during the night with a light anchor attached to a forty- fathom cable hanging overboard, and when this caught upon a bank or reef, then soundings were taken and registered, but his forty-fathom anchor might have been swinging about all around, without touching the ground. With this information to guide us in estimating the value of the soundings in Jacob Swartz's map, it is clear that they are worth nothing for our purpose, unless where numerous and close together. I therefore have adopted Mr. Wallace's view, and assumed that the water on the eastern side of the Straits of Macassar is throughout of very great depth. t See paper by Mr. Wallace in Linn. Soc. Proa, Feb. 1860. See also a communication by Mr. Wallace in the lbti for October 1859. On this last point I am not pre pared at once to go unreservedly along with Mr. Wallace. It may be that the surrounding depression was due to a more extensive general previous sinking, and that the area in question has been again raised by the volcanic action referred to by Mr. Wallace, stretching through or run ning across the general depression. The theory of alter nate bands of elevation and depression may be pushed too far. 60 MAMMALS. which can be traced between some of the plants and animals inhabiting widely separated por tions of the supposed continent. On this subject Professor Owen says, "Certain it was that geologists had conceived that the islands on the south of the present great Continent of Asia might be remnants of some antecedent very distinct group of land, and naturalists (and he would more especially mention Sir J. Emerson Tennent, who had paid so great attention to the fauna of Ceylon), had brought to their knowledge a host of facta confirmatory of the idea that Ceylon was not a dismemberment of India, but part of a distinct and antecedent continent. In confirmation of that idea, they had the result of the geological researches of Cautley, Falconer, and others in India, which seemed to show that the Himmalayahs had risen, lifting up the fossiliferous beds on their present slopes within comparatively recent geographical time, proving that India had been the site of one of the latest of these greatest systems of upheaving forces that resulted in the formation of new continents." * We find, in the islands and coral islets surrounded by this unfathomable ocean, a race which will in no respect harmonise with, and by no ingenuity can be made to fit into, the brown tribes of the Malayan Peninsula and Islands, and still less the white races of Asia : this race is that known as the Papuans, or Negritos. It is a new and distinct race, the like of which we have not previously met with. We shall find its like, however, if we turn to Africa, to the south of that point where a barrier as effective as the deep sea of Celebes has interrupted the continuity of the land, viz. the Desert of Sahara. It does not much matter whether we look upon that barrier as consisting of the present arid desert or a broad sea occupying its place. Either barrier would probably be sufficient to stop the extension of the northern race into Africa south of the desert. Be that as it may, certain it is that something has isolated South Africa from North Africa, for north of the desert we have one fauna and flora, and south of it another ; and as to man, north of the Sahara we have the Arabs — undoubtedly a por tion of the white northern race — while south of it we have a new race, the Negro, as distinct from them as at the other barrier the Papuans and surrounding nations are distinct from the Malays and Chinese. And strange, too, both of these new races lying on the south side of these respective barriers have much in common. Both are black, both have their hair frizzled or woolly, both have broad noses, thick and prominent lips, receding foreheads and chins, and what should be the white of the eye of a turbid yellow, or, as a recent writer phrases it when speaking of the aborigines of Fraser's or Great Sandy Island, near Brisbane in Australia, " They appear to be very bilious, for what ought to be the white of the eye is a dirty yellow." f Both have broad shoulders and deep chests, both are inferior in the make of their lower extremities, having long lanky legs, splay feet, and curved shins, and of bath it may be said, " From every pore of him a perfume falls." Two distinctions have been attempted to be drawn between them, — the one that the colour of the African is black over brown, while that of the Papuans is blue over black, or black with a bluish tinge, but this is now known to be a mistake. The blue black of the Papuans is due to some artificial application, "pro- * Owbn, in " Proceedings of Geographical Society," vol. that peninsula, than belonging to Sumatra or the Malayan vi. p. 44, 1862. As we go along, I think we shall see reason Peninsula. to doubt the sufficiency of Sir J. Emerson Tennent's t " Narrative of a Trip from Sydney to Peak Downs, arguments against the appurtenancy of Ceylon to India, Queensland, and back," by E. S. II., London, 1864, p. 4. and rather to look upon it as a dismembered portion of DISTRIBUTION OF MAN. 61 bably the decoction of the bark of a tree, possibly the ' rosamala' of commerce."* The other that the hair of the African spreads over the whole surface of the head, while that of the Papuan grows in small tufts, each of which is separate from the rest. But there are African tribes, the Hot tentots and Bushmen, for example, which have the hair growing in this same tufty fashion ; and I see that M. Du Chaillu observed the same thing in the pigmy race, which he met with in his last expedition into the interior of West Africa — a race which may possibly be a tribe of the Bushman variety of the African race. Such distinctions, moreover, even although well founded, are only of minor significance, and point to a distinction of tribes, not of races. So far as physical character goes then, the Papuans and Africans are clearly allied. How far the languages are so is a point which is not yet settled, but in one respect they certainly have an affinity. Some of the African tribes make a peculiar clucking noise in their speech. This is a much more remarkable character than those who have not heard it have any idea of. I remember on one occasion dining in company with some missionaries destined for Caffirland, one of whom was a Caffir who had been brought to this country in early youth, and had been educated as a divinity student in order to go back as a missionary to his native land. He gave us examples of the Caffir language, talking in his native tongue, and the clucking was so like the drawing of corks and pouring liquid out of a bottle, that on one of the English missionaries who was to accompany him saying that he meant to take lessons from him in the language in his cabin on the way out, one of the guests cautioned him that the sound of so many corks being drawn would destroy their character for temperance with the rest of the passengers. But this clucking would appear to be a character of the language of some of the Oriental as well as the African black tribes. Mr. Earl, in speaking of the North Australians who have a certain affinity to the Papuans, says : — "In the Croker Island dialect a cluck occasionally occurs in the middle of a word, which is effected by striking the tongue against the roof of the mouth. "t This illustra tion shows that there are grounds for looking for proof of relationship between the African and the Oriental negroes in their linguistic affinities as well as in their physical attributes. I do not in any way go along with the bold conjecture hazarded by Professor Agassiz that "the lan guages of different races of men were neither more different nor more similar than the sounds characteristic of animals of the same genus, and their analogy can no more be fully accounted for on any hypothesis of transmission or tradition than in the case of birds of the same genus uttering similar notes in Europe and in America." J On the contrary, I think that the structure and roots of language preserve decided evidence of the intellect of man, and furnish valuable aid in tracing the affinities of nations. To meet the requirements of the hypothesis of a common origin for the languages of the African negro, Oriental negro, and Australian, it is only necessary that the radical structure of all the languages should be the same ; the languages themselves may be widely different and wholly unintelligible to the different tribes. A few remote connexions with the main staple of the language are probably all that could be expected, in countries so long and so widely separated ; but each country, according to the hypothesis, should have one type to itself, and each should, in * "Ethnographical Library," vol. i. "The ^Native t Earl, op. cit., p. 222. Races of the Indian Archipelago— Papuans," by George \ Agassiz, in " Proceed. Amer. Acad. Arts and Sei- Windsor Earl. London, 1863. P. 47. euces," vol. iii. p. 7. 1857. 62 MAMMALS. some way, however faint, be connected with the other. That each has a common type to itself, wo know to be the case. The Australian languages are all referable to one type. So are the African (those north of the Sahara always excepted). Mr. Burton* says of one of the tribes on the Cameroon Mountains on the west coast of Africa : — " Their dialect is a branch of the great South African family whose type is the Kaffir tongue." And Dr. Kirk informs me that the same thing is the case with the languages of the Zambesians and those of the tribes stretching across Africa. The Papuan language in like manner has many dialects. The inquiry leaves an alternative problem for the philologist to solve, viz., either to point out the presence of some common elements of structure showing connexion between the languages of all three countries, — Africa, Papua, and Australia, or else to show some discrepancy wholly inconsistent with it. They have this basis to start from — that the foundation and structure of these languages is different from that of the tribes north of the barriers above mentioned. Let us now see what peoples and countries may be referred to this black stock. Taking Africa by itself, it is scarcely necessary to go into any argument to prove that all the tribes on that continent south of the Saharan barrier belong to the same race. That may be safely assumed as proved. Nearest to Africa, and, only separated from it by a comparatively shallow connecting sub merged neck of land, lies Madagascar. The present state of its population requires to be sub jected to qualification before it can be admitted as relevant to this inquiry — a considerable portion of it bearing strong evidence of colonization by the Malays. This is of comparatively recent date, probably within, or not much beyond our own historic times, and of course cannot be taken into account in speculating on the aboriginal population of the island. The result of this immigration is not only a certain amount of Malay element among a portion of the Malagese, but the oc currence in their language of a considerable body of Malayan and Javanese words. That such a colonization should have taken place is the more remarkable when we look at the great dis tance (3000 miles) from Madagascar to Java and the Malay peninsula. Ethnologists have attempted to account for these peculiarities by supposing that a fleet of Malay pirates had been tempest- driven on the coast of Madagascar, and, unable to find their way back, had at first been able to protect and establish themselves, and afterwards becoming absorbed in the general population by intermarriage, had, besides communicating a portion of their blood, imparted some of their knowledge, cultivation, and language. Mr. Crawford, speaking on this subject,f says : " The people of Madagascar (that is, the aboriginal people) are not Malays, nor do they bear any resem blance to them. They are, in fact, negroes ; but negroes of a particular description. They are negroes in the same sense that Portuguese, and Laps, and Englishmen, Germans and Spaniards, are European, and in no other." This is exactly what may be said not only of the Malagese, but of all the other black tribes spread over the islands of the Southern Ocean. The Mauritius and Bourbon Islands may be dismissed as islands which were probably not inhabited at the time of the original peopling of the other lands of which I speak. The Dodo would never have survived to furnish even a solitary specimen or two to our museums had the islands on which it lived been peopled by savages, whether black or white, or, I should rather say, had they been peopled at all. Next, looking farther eastward, it will scarcely be disputed that, whatever objections there may * Burton, in " Proceedings of Geog. Soc." p. 241. (1862.) t Crawford, in " Proc. Geog. Soc." vol. ii. pp. 69, 70. (1862, 1863.) DISTRIBUTION OF MAN. 63 be to ranking the Oriental negroes with the African negroes, all the New Guinea blacks are of one race, whether natives of Papua itself, or of any of the numerous islands lying around it. Some authors, doubtless led astray by the apparently parallel, but really most distinct case of the Hill tribes in India, &c., have attempted to make a distinction between the natives of the hills and those of the coast, in Papua and other islands. This distinction is shown by the most trustworthy authors* to be without foundation, except so far as we have in our own lands a population differing somewhat according to the nature of their occupation and localities. In like manner, the negritos of the Phi lippine Islands cannot be separated from the other Papuan blacks ; and if it be true that there are negritos in Formosa, (which Mr. Swinhoe's recent observations gives us reason to question), they also without doubt belong to the same race ;f and, lastly, there is an overwhelming weight of testimony that all the oceanic tribes of Polynesia belong to the same race. The natives of the different groups of islands, no doubt, have each some peculiar characters of their own, but all belong to one type, and that type, the black Papuan. Some of the islands, such as New Zealand, are indeed sup posed to have been colonized only very recently, and within the historical epoch ; but if so, they have been colonized from the original black stock. There is, perhaps, more difference when we come to estimate the discrepancies and resemblances between the Papuans and Australians. In doing so, there are various collateral points to be taken into consideration. In the first place, we must remember that although the Papuan Islands, or Austro-Malayan region and the Polynesian have numerous plants and animals peculiar to themselves, both their faunas and floras have, to a considerable extent, an Australian character. In mammals, for example, while the Indian region, including Borneo, Java, Sumatra, &c., possesses no marsupials, but abounds in forms of the most highly developed mammals, the Austro-Malayan or Papuan region does not, but has several marsupials ; and Polynesia so far accords with it, that its only mammals belong to an order also found in Australia — the bats. In birds, as Dr. Sclater and Mr. Wallace have shown, although the actual number of species common both to Australia and Papua be not great (about twenty-five out of one hundred and eighty-six) J there is a great affinity in many remarkable genera, and the resemblance extends not only to genera which have been found in both, but also to those which are absent in both, although present in strong force in the neighbouring Indian district. Dr. Giinther has come to similar conclusions as regards the Reptiles and Batrachians. In Ento mology, Australian relations also occur, some of which (in the Hymenoptera) have been pointed out by Mr. Frederick Smith of the British Museum,§ and similar connexions occur in other groups. The botany of Australia and Papua, so far as the latter is known (which is not much), has similar points of resemblance. The inference to be drawn from these facts is, that as a connexion subsists between tho other animals of Papua and those of Australia, there may be one between their human inha bitants also. Professor Agassiz holds that the distribution of man will be found in the main to coincide with the regional distribution of other animals ; and so far as man's tribal distribution goes, the idea is not without warrant. For example, the Arctic fauna and flora is nearly homo- * Modera, " Verhaal van eene Reize naar de Zuid-West J Reckoned from " Catalogue of tho Mammalia and Kust van Nicw-Guinea." Haarlem, 1830. Earl, op. Birds of New Guinea, in the Collection of the British cit. p. 61. Museum," 1869. i Swinhoe, in '* Proc. Geog. Soc," voL viii. p. 26. § F. Smith, in " Proc. Linn. Soc." vol. v. p. 93, et seq (1863-64). 1861. 64 MAMMALS. geneous; — so, one tribe of man, the Esquimaux, inhabits the same region. The Mediterranean district has a sub-fauna and sub-flora of its own, composed of a mixture of European and North African species ; the African coast having the preponderance of African, the European of European types. We see something like this in the human inhabitants of the same district ; the Europeans (Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, and Turks) are more swarthy and liker the Arabs than their more northerly brethren. Other instances of tribes of men corresponding more or less to the zoological districts in which they live might be quoted. We may thus fairly use the analogy of such correspondence, between the regional distribution of man and the other animals, as an argument, valeat quantum, for holding that there is such a relation between the human tribes of Papua and Australia, because we find a similar relation between their other animals. Another circumstance which has an important bearing on the probable affinity of the Papuans and Australians is, that a rise of land of no more than two or three hundred feet would unite Papua to Australia. We have already seen that while a rise of the same amount would unite Java, Borneo, and Sumatra with the Indian continent, it would still leave them separated from the Papuan region by a deep channel. The probability of the connexion of Papua and Australia, and the fact of their marked separation from the Indian continent being thus established, we may be more disposed to admit the force of such resemblances as can be traced between their respective peoples. There is no doubt considerable difference in their appearance. Most of the Australians have long, unfrizzled hair, and their hollow cheeks and starved countenances give them less of the features of the African negro. We have been so long accustomed to think of them as a race by themselves, that any proposition which tends to destroy their theoretical position goes against our preconceptions. But examined abstractedly, we must abate our preconceived notions considerably. First, the homogeneousness of the Australians is not absolute. Considerable variation occurs in their form. They have not all lank, straight hair. The aborigines of Van Dieman's land on the one hand, and some of the tribes on the north coast and in the interior of Northern Australia on the other, have frizzled hair, Papuan features, and other negritan characters. So much so, that Mr. Earl* sets himself to work to devise some theory of Polynesians or Papuans having engrafted Papuan blood on Australian stock ; " for many circumstances," says he, " which I shall have to state more distinctly below, would induce the supposition that the aboriginal inhabitants of this part of Australia very closely resembled the Papuans of New Guinea, or, what is almost the same thing, the aborigines of Van Dieman's Land." If any one part of Australia is once admitted to be peopled by the same race as the Papuans, the general character of the race and their geographical position would lead to the inference that the whole must be so too. The Nicobar Islanders and the Andaman Islanders are other isolated items of the great black race. Without attempting to find relations for these, Professor Owen puts very clearly the negative position that the latter do not belong to any of the neighbouring peoples (that is, the Hindoo, Burmese, or Malay). He says: — "Why should ethnologists when they come to study the natives of an insulated group of people like the Andamaners deem it necessary to determine to what contem poraneous people they were allied, on the assumption that they had been derived from some existing * Earl, in " Journ. Geograph. Soc." xvi. 239. DISTRIBUTION OF MAN. 65 and neighbouring land ? Geological science had established the fact of continuous and progressive, though extremely slow mutations of land and sea, and had taught them that the continents of modern geography were only the last phases of those mutations. How long the human species had existed and how far they had been contemporaneous with such mutations were the preliminary questions which presented themselves in grappling with the problem suggested by a peculiar insular race like the Mincopies. . . . Was it not possible that the Andamaners might have come from nowhere, that is to say, from no actual contiguous and separate land, but might be the representatives of an old race belonging to a former continent that had almost disappeared?"* * Owen, in " Proc. Geograph. Soc.," 1862, p. 82. 66 CIIAPTEE VIII. distribution of man continued HILL TRIBES OF INDIA RANK and priority of black and WHITE RACKS. There still remains undisposed of one other peculiar type of human heings which seems to be very- much in pari casu with the Andamaners, except that the latter have their place of abode surrounded by the sea, while the former are surrounded by dry land and a sea of strange people. It is what are called the Hill tribes of India. A number of isolated tribes, each speaking a language of their own, and described as the most degraded specimens of humanity on the face of the earth, are found in the fastnesses of the mountains of India and some of the Malayan Islands, and of the adjoining continent. They exist in one or two parts of Borneo ; * they are not found in Sumatra, f nor in Java, at least now ; % but they occur in the Malay Peninsula, § in Siam, and, it was said, in Burmah ; they are also said to be found in parts of Cochin China, || and even in China itself. They are not found, or perhaps it would be safer to say not now found, in Ceylon,^ but they still remain in a good many of the moun tainous parts of India in all the three Presidencies, where they are known under the name of Tudas or Todars, Badagars, Koters, Kurumbers, Bheels, Kulis,** &c. The more general opinion regarding these Hill tribes is that they formerly occupied the land round about their present fastnesses, and that they had been gradually encroached upon by the other nations which now occupy the country * Earl, op. cit. 144 ; and Dalton in Moor's Dhers, Gowlies, Barka, Tallary, Carumba, Cherumars, " Notices of the Indian Archip." 1831, p. 49. Morawa, Collary, Pully, Pariah, Yenedy, Chenchy, Gond, t Earl, op. cit., 175. Kond, Sawara, Banderwa, Cheru, Bengy, Kooki, Garro, X Remains of some ancient race, which had used spear- Kassia, Hajin, Bhar, Dhanuk and Dhome." And he adds, heads similar to those used by the present inhabitants of " Among these tribes the etymologist may, without dim- North Australia, arc described as having been found in culty, trace the names of many of the territorial divisions Java, in the" Natuurkundige Tydschrift voor Nederlaudsch which have been assigned to several portions of India by Indie," 1800. the Hindus. Thus, Kolwan, from the Koles ; Bhilwan § A woolly-haired race called Lemanys. See Ander- and Bhilwara, from the Bhils ; Mhar-rashtra, by contrac- son, in " Journal of Indian Archip." iv., 425, 1838. tion Mharatta, from the Mhars ; Man Desa, from the Mans | A savage race of people, very black, and resembling or Mangs ; the city of Beder, from the Beders ; Gondwara, in their features, the Caflres. Chapman's "Report to the from the Gonds ; Oria-Dcsa, or Orissa, from the Orias ; Bengal Government of a Diplomatic Mission to Cochin Kolwan and Koliwara, from the Koles." China, in 1778," in Parliamentary Papers relating to India. Doubtless, many of these may be mere sub-races of the ^[ The Veddahs of Ceylon seem only what may be called Hindoos ; my argument applies only to those whose phy- a feral tribe of the other Cingalese. sical and other characters approach those of the Negritos. ** Myor-General Brings gives the following as the See "Pteport on the Aboriginal Tribes of India," by Major- names of tome of these tribes, adding that there are many General John Briggs, in Reports of the British Association, others of which he has not sufficient details, viz. "Miuas, 1850, p. 159. Mers, Bhils, Dhiro Kolies, Mhars, Mangs or Mans, Beders, HILL TRIBES OF INDIA. (17 around them, and driven into the hills or retreated to them for shelter.* Others, as Mr. Crawford, believe that " they are no other than natives of the country, mere mountaineers who had escaped from the bondage, and hence from the civilization, of the plains." The accounts which we read of their physical attributes, of the low scale of their intellectual and moral perceptions, and the degraded level which they occupy in the scale of humanity, forbid us, I think, to accept Mr. Crawford's explanation. The more generally received view is less open to objection, but there is usually a hypothesis appended to it which does not appear to me to meet the facts of the case, viz. that the tribes of which we speak are of Tartar or Thibetan extraction. Major-General Briggs * The following data, quoted from Major-General Briggs' report above cited, support the view that these aboriginal tribes were in possession of the whole of India prior to the incursion of the Hindoos, and that they had been gradually driven into their present fastnesses by their en croachments. "About twenty-seven centuries ago, according to the Vedas or Holy Scriptures of the Hindus, it would appear that the Hindus had not yet penetrated further south than the twenty-second parallel of north latitude, beyond which (the work states) there then existed " extensive forests, inhabited by a wild and impure race speaking barbarous tongues." " At what precise period the Hindu invasion from the west first occurred it is impossible to say, but the geo graphy of India indicates at once that that race neces sarily came through Afghanistan and the Punjaub ere it turned the borders of the Great Desert and penetrated in the direction of Dehli. There is every reason to believe that the Hindfi race gradually overspread the territory of Upper India east and west between the Himalaya Moun tains and the Great Desert, without penetrating to the south for many centuries ; that it enslaved the aboriginal races as it subdued them, compelling them to till their own lands as serfs, and took from the latter the whole produce, except what was actually required as food for the tillers of the soil. " The historical as well as the religious works of the Hindus, of a comparatively modern date, together with monumental remains existing in sculptured edifices and rock caves, all tend to show that no portion of the Penin sula of India was subdued by them anterior to the fifth century of the Christian era. About that time it is sup posed that the Peninsula became gradually overspread by the Bramanical race. They seem to have entered in two directions ; the one from Guzerat gradually extending over Khandeish and Berar till they reached to the forests which fringe the banks of the river Wurda, where it meets with the Godavery ; the other invasion, according to tradition, occurred about the same time. It passed from the valley of the Ganges aud penetrated southward along the line of coast of the Bay of Bengal, keeping within the range of mountains on the east and the ocean, till after reaching the embouchures of the Godavery and the Kistna the invaders spread out over the plains and pro ceeded southward. " It has been assumed that about the same period, the Bhudists, a peculiar sect of the Hindds, reached the shores of Ceylon and Southern India from the opposite coast, and thence proceeding northward, spread their religious doctrines among the aborigines. About the ninth or tenth century the Bhudists and Bramans appear to have met from opposite directions, which led to deadly conflicts, and ended in the Bramans putting down the Bhudist tenets. " We have historical proof that the island of Bombay was not subjugated to the Hindft rule till the fourteenth cen tury ; and that in the beginning of the next century the Mahommedans found princes of th3 aboriginal race oc cupying in force several strongholds not far from Poona. The town and district of Sorapoor, lying between Hydra- bad and the western mountains, is still held by an abori ginal chief with a portion of his tribe ; and within the memory of man the kingdom of Mysore contained several principalities of the Beder race. " Further south, the Morawas and Collars obtained cele brity in modern times by their adhesion to one or other of the European belligerent powers (France or England), and evinoed fidelity, and even devotion, to the cause of the party which each espoused. " The aboriginal races differ, one and all, in every respect from the Hindis. Their government is strictly patri archal ; all crimes are punished and disputes settled by the award of the elders or heads of tribes assembled. They have no prejudices against animal food of any kind, whether the animal be slaughtered or die a natural death. In those parts still unsubdued, such as a great part of Gondwana and the contiguous tracts of Goomser and Bustar, and in some portion of the country lying farther eastward among the Assam Hills, they continue to make human sacrifices ; a practice to which these races have been prone, according to Hindfi records, from the earliest ages. They also worship power in every shape to avert danger ; hence all beasts of prey, such as tigers, bears and leopards, venomous serpents and other reptiles ; as also the elephant and rhinoceros in a wild state." — Briggs, op. cit. p. 169. 68 MAMMALS. says that their domestic habits and institutions have a strong affinity to those of the great Tartar family ; thoy may serve as a specimen of the whole race. In some parts both men and women bore their ears, and wear heavy rings to extend the lower lobe. Captain Newbold, of the Madras army, who has written on the Chenchies of the Nalla Malla, or Black Mountains, represents those he saw- as having long bushy hair, thick lips, high cheek-bones, and small piercing eyes.* Sir Richard Jenkins and Colonel Agnew confirm this description in speaking of thei Gonds; and I believe no instance will be found of those residing entirely on the hills having the aquiline nose or the delicacy of feature of the Caucasian family. General Briggs thinks that they partake rather of the Tartar or Thibetan physiognomy, than of the Hindu. He adds, however, a sort of apolo getic explanation which does not show great faith in their Tartar parentage : " The remote period of their settlement in India, and the possibility of an occasional intermixture with the Hindus, may, in some cases, have somewhat changed their physiognomy from that of their ancestors, so as to render it doubtful whether or not they are derived from that branch of the human family, though in their habits and institutions they certainly bear a strong affinity to the Tartar branch. "f The view which has occurred to me as most reconcilable with facts is, that, like the Andamaners, these tribes are remnants of the inhabitants of the great submerged continent above alluded to b}r Pro fessor Owen. This continent at some time or other, not all at one time, or in the same direction, but from time to time, and with breaches of continuity which interrupted communication between various parts of it, probably included all the oceanic Archipelagoes, Papua, Australia, Africa south of the Sahara, East India south of the Ilimmalayahs, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, Burmah, Siam, the Malay Peninsula, Cochin China, part of China, and the whole of the Philippine Islands, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra. That all this vast space was at any one time a united continent I do not suppose nor maintain ; on the contrary, there is everything to lead to a different conclusion ; there appear to have been at least two continents ; as now we see the very 6ame area of the southern hemisphere rising in some parts and falling in others, no doubt this happened in former times also, and its size and configuration would constantly vary. Opportunity of access might thus be given for one type to traverse and penetrate every part of this vast area ; but by long interruptions and suspension of communication, many might never be able to avail themselves of it, and these long lapses of time might give opportunity for the development of new species or varieties from others which had only reached half way, as it were, on their journey, and who, while the way was still open to them to penetrate deeper and spread themselves further in one direction, had perhaps their retreat cut off by a subsidence of the continent behind them, and no opportunity of spreading their off spring of newly developed forms in the direction from which they came. Lastly, I assume that these continents were peopled by a black race of many tribes, of which the Negritans are the descendants ; that as the Chagos Bank, the Laccadivc Islands and Maldive Islands have sunk, so did Ceylon and India ; so did the land in the Bay of Bengal ; so did the other lands in which Hill tribes are found ; in fact, that the whole or certain parts of the supposed land sunk more or less gradually ; we know that almost the whole of Africa and Madagascar, and a * Can the clucking sound in the language of the Xe- without difficulty by any but a native of the province in groes have anything to do with a palatal peculiarity in which the language containing them is spoken." He adds, tha .speech of these aboriginal tribes ! Dr. Heinhokl Rost "These sounds are unknown in Sanscrit." of Berlin, remarks, " that the palatal sounds of the letters t Bmugs, op. cit. pp. 172, 173. r, d, j, t, arc confined to India, and cannot be pronounced HILL TRIBES OF INDIA. 63 portion of Australia, were not submerged ; but the most of the rest, at one time or other, was. As under the gradual sinking of the land, which I suppose to have taken place, the ocean encroached upon the great tracts submerged there would bo a delugo and a loss of life, such as we can only faintly imagine ; something to which we have no parallel. It may perhaps have been the Noachian deluge, which still dwells in the traditions of every race or tribe on the face of the earth. As the ocean slowly and gradually invaded the plains, the inhabitants must have retreated to the high mountain-tops, — become Hill tribes, in fact. Doubtless great tracts of this supposed continent, as is the case in all other continents, consisted of vast plains, which, gradually converted into muddy marshes, may have taken thousands of years to sink beyond the depth of man ; and when this was the case, he must have there died off by hardship, exposure, and want of food, long before the sea rose so high as actually to drown him ; but where there were mountains, hills, or even trifling elevations, a small remnant would be saved, but not without enduring great hardships. On the mountains, so long as other animals, which may have shared the refuge, lasted, they would have a precarious supply of food ; but as the space, and with it the food diminished, bloody struggles must have taken place for space and means of life ; and if we could delve into the heart of some of the atolls we might perhaps find there mute evidence of the strength and despair of the combatants, in mutilated relics of humanity. Let us assume that all were not so cut off ; that before the last familv on the islet was extir pated, the gradual downward motion ceased, over a portion of the district of which we have spoken ; that volcanoes and earthquakes spoke of change, and that by-and-byc the land began to rise, or, as the poor inhabitants would think, the sea began to fall, and their lives were saved to puzzle the brains of another race with their affinity and descent. As the land rose above the sea, and the fertile ooze of these tropical seas became rich in verdure, the inhabitants would descend and take possession of the land : but by-and-bye, when the northern hemisphere rose in its turn, and was peopled with a fauna, flora, and human in habitants of its own, the events indicated by General Briggs probably took place. A portion of these northern Asiatics (that is, the Hindoos) invaded India. Now what would be the effect of such an invasion upon the aboriginal inhabitants who had been previously in very much the same position as that in which the Andamaners arc now left? Let us try to realize it by applying the test to them. Suppose the Indian Ocean to be raised, so as to unite the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands to the mainland on both sides and throw open the plains which were but lately at the bottom of the Bay of Bengal, and now were rich in vegetation, to the grasp of the Hindoo and Burmese — I shall say nothing of the European, for what would happen were he, with his civilization and knowledge of science and arts, to come in contact with a tribe of savages, furnishes no fair parallel to what would take place with a less highly endowed people. Let us turn loose the aboriginal Hindoos and Burmese in millions to compete with the few Andanniners for the possession of the rich bottoms of the Indian Ocean. The contest would not be long. The fertile plains would soon be seized and appropriated by their more numerous, .stronger, and comparatively more intelligent competitors. The Andamaners would be driven back to their old fastnesses — their original mountain-tops. And what would happen then ? would the Hindoos try to exterminate the Andamaners in order to seize what would be the impregnable tops of the Andaman mountains, or would they allow their inhabitants to live as the Hill tribes now do, still, as on an island in the midst of the sea, surrounded by a sea 70 MAMMALS. of new people, not increasing, perhaps gradually diminishing, but for long preserving the memory of a different and bygone state of things ? I imagine they would neither covet their fastnesses nor seek to deprive them of them. The labour of toiling to the top of mountains is distasteful to these races, not to speak of the aimless warfare they would have to encounter, and the black races would be allowed to enjoy their sterile fastnesses unmolested. Such is the fate which I believe has befallen the Hill tribes ; and these are the grounds on which I think that if there is nothing but their geographical distribution to prevent us referring them to the great black race on the ground of their physical attributes, we may venture to follow that course. There are other facts founded on the distribution of animals and plants, in India and the Austra lian region, which give support to the explanation of the position of the Hill tribes which I have above suggested. From the fact of a large proportion of the animals which are found in Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, being identical with those found on the mainland, there is little or no doubt that these islands must at some former period have been united to it ; so that it appears that before the present upward movement, which these are now undergoing, there must have been a down ward one, and before that again an upward one, as we have seen is probably the case with other countries. The islands must have been first united with the mainland to allow the inter communication of species. A subsidence must then have taken place to throw them into something like their present configuration, and there is now again a gradual rise reuniting them slowly to the mainland. Now, Dr. Joseph Hooker, in his Flora of Australia,* gives a list of nearly 500 plants found in that country, which are either identical, or very nearly so, with continental or insular Indian species ; but, on the other hand, -he states that there is scarcely a single Australian type to be found in India, and the few that occur are in Eastern India. It would appear as if there had been no reciprocity, that all the mutual types have been borrowed from India, and that Australia had given none in return (for 10, which is the number, against 500 can scarcely bo called reciprocity). Now, this is quite in accordance with the course of events, which I have supposed to have occurred. If Australia and India were united for a time, a mutual communication of their respective floras must have followed, as a necessary consequence. If, when India sunk, the tops of the mountains, where the Hill tribes still exist, were not submerged, a certain proportion of the flora would be there preserved. When, long afterwards, India again emerged from below the waters, a new Indian flora would gradually be developed out of the remnant left on the tops of the mountains to supply the new lands : but as the new emergence went no further south than Ceylon, the new types could not find their way to Australia. There appear to have been only ten Australian plants which have found their way by flotsam and jetsam from Australia to India, against 500 Indian plants which remain in Australia by ancient continuity. If there is any foundation for the above speculation, the connexion between India and Australia must have been very ancient, and at a time when one or other of them was not in a condition to supply the other with mammals, although it could with plants. I must not occupy tho time of the reader here with botanical speculations, which will come better when we reach that branch of our subject, but I cannot refrain from citing one instructive instance in favour of the existence of the connexion already indicated between Africa and south west Australia. It is long since a connexion between the vegetation of these countries has been * "Flora of Australia," \jy Jos. D. HoaKEit. Introductory Essay, p. xli'. (1859). RANK AND PRIORITY OF BLACK AND WHITE RACES. 71 surmised. Lambert, in his "Genus Pinus," forty years ago, said of Podocarpus Saligna, that it afforded one of many examples of coincidence between the vegetation of Chile with that of New Holland, and the southern extremity of Africa;* and Dr. Hooker, in the essay above quoted, mentions various botanical facts confirmative and indicative of an ancient communication between south-west Australia and South Africa. Besides great differences in the genera and species of south east and south-west Australia ; he found many new forms, and types, and curious analogies between the flora of the latter and that of South Africa. On this Dr. Hooker remarks, " There is another way of viewing the whole question, but one so purely speculative, that I hesitate to put it forward. It is, that the antecedents of the peculiar Australian Flora may have inhabited an area to the westward of the present Australian continent, and that the curious analogies which the latter presents with the South African flora, and which are so much more conspicuous in the south-west quarter, may be connected with such a prior state of tilings."* Here, too, the relationship between many of the plants in the south-west of Australia and the Cape of Good Hope does not extend to the mammals. Therefore, it is not illogical to infer that the former continuity of land by which these African types found their way to Australia must have existed before mammals in Africa had appeared there, at all events, in any numbers, or it would have contributed them too. The period of continuity must therefore have been very ancient. Africa here contributed types ; Australia, few or none. If it contributed none, then another inference follows, viz., that the connecting land could not have been united with both at the same time. The bridge must have been begun on the African side, and by the time the in vaders had reached a certain distance on their way, it must have been broken down behind them ; but as it continued to be formed or to rise from the ocean in the direction of Australia until it reached its south-west corner they completed the passage, and their descendants have remained there after the land which formed the passage has sunk out of sight. There still remain one or two accessory points of great difficulty regarding the distribution of man which had better be here disposed of. First. Wbat is the rank of the two races ? — the blacks and the whites. Are they to be reckoned as species, or are they merely tribes, in the same way, although better defined and more widely separated from each other than the tribes into which they themselves branch off? The difficulty of separating species increases as we ascend the scale of life. Professor Agassiz has drawn attention to this in monkeys, in the lion, the bear, and other highly organised vertebrata, and it seems to reach its culminating point in man. It would appear as if the action of the developing power had, in its long course, undergone some change, not in nature but in degree, some modification such as we see typified in the actual growth and life of man and his fellow-creatures ; its steps were wider apart and more decided in earlier days, and its ideas, so to speak, simpler and less matured : in age its action has become more precise and more important, and as the creatures developed have acquired a higher and higher grade, the steps in advance have been shorter and more frequent. It may be, for example, that had the influence of development, or creation, to which we owe the two races of man, or any of the doubtful species of monkey, been exercised on less highly organised animals, the product would have been more absolutely distinct species. I incline to regard the two races not as the result merely of ordinary generation and variation, but of the * Lajibkrt, " Genus Pinus,-' 2nd edition, 1S32, ii. No. 71. f Hooker, op. cit. p. lv. 72 MAMMALS. action of the law of development through which new species are derived ; and I account for the product being something less than what would be reckoned a species in other orders by the high organisation of the creature developed. Still in whatever light wo regard them, or by whatever means we attempt to account for the difference between the two, we must trace the one to the other ; and two other questions arise — viz. AVhich race is descended from the other, that is, which is the oldest? and through which of its known tribes, supposing us to know them all, (which, by the way, we can scarcely suppose that we do,) did the other draw its origin ? These are questions which we have not sufficient data to enable us to answer. Such as we have, however, seem rather to point to the white race drawing its origin from the black, than the black from the white. In the first place, it is in the direction of progress. In the next place, according to the alternations of elevation and subsidence on which we have been speculating, while the great continent of the southern hemisphere was in its prime and peopled by the black race, the northern continents were almost wholly under water, and possibly without human inha bitants. (See Maps 2 and 3.) The second question is not less difficult : Where has the passage from the one race to the other been made ? We may coast along the barrier line, and try everywhere for a point of resemblance which may guide us in saying, " Here is the point where the crossing took place," but we can find absolutely none ; the line is everywhere clear and defined ; and this is another reason for thinking that here there has been an exercise of the developing power similar to what we see in the case of new species. Where nature really takes a step from one species to another she leaves no trace of her passage ; and this, as the reader knows, is the recalcitrant fact which, by refusing to be backed into the line of Mr. Darwin's argument, chiefly disarranges its array ; wo seek in vain for the passage from an elephant to a rhinoceros, or from a monkey to a man ; as Prof. Huxley says, " The fossil remains of man, hitherto discovered, do not seem to take us apparently nearer to that lower Pithecoid form by the modification of which he has probably become what he is ;"* no such transitional forms appear ever to have existed, and if so of course none can be found. The only indication which occurs to me as likely to lead to even an approximation to the truth, is perhaps to be looked for in the habits of tribes. Where two tribes of the different races have similar habits or weapons, that fact may perhaps be taken as evidence of proximity or acquaintance at some period long since gone by; for instance, the sumpitan, or blow-pipe, is used by some of the tribes of New Guinea, and also by those of the Amazons and Orinocko, and by no other race in the whole world. It is rather a peculiar weapon, not one likely to occur independently to two minds ; may they not both have derived it from a common source ? Dr. Daniel Wilson on other grounds supports the conclusion to which this would lead, — he says that " many analogies confirm the probabilitv of some portion of the North American stock having entered the continent from Asia ;" but that " while theoretically the northern passage seems so easy, yet so far as any direct proof goes, the Polynesian entrance into the south across the wide barrier of the Pacific is the one most readily sustained."f Another point not to be overlooked is, that at some period in the past history of these regions, South America was most probably united to Australia, if we may draw any inference from the presence of allied forms of life common to both. * Huxley's " Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," Civilisation in the Old and New World," by Daniel 1863. Wilson, L.L.D. t Prehistoric man— " Researches into the Origin of ^i7(paiTnrrr]TisyAgfr 73 CHAPTER IX. MONKEYS EXTINCT AND LIVING. The kind and extent of the distinction between Man and the higher Apes, has formed the subject of much discussion of late years, especially upon some premises laid down by Professor Owen. The Professor, while admitting that the distinction between Man and the Apes could not be considered as " other than a difference in degree," maintains that the difference in degree is so great that Man must form a separate and independent section of equal importance to the other great sub-classes into which zoologists have divided the animal kingdom. In support of this he adduced certain anatomical peculiarities which he thought he had discovered in the brain of Man, sufficient to distinguish it in character from that of the nearest Apes.* His views have been controverted by Professor Huxley f and other eminent zoologists ; and the general verdict of anato mists would seem to be that the differences mentioned by Owen either do not exist or are not of the importance he supposed, and consequently that the distinction L; not well founded, so far as it rests on them ; and Professor Huxley has, I think, satisfactorily shown that Man (considered purely as an animal, which is all that the zoologist has to do with) cannot be regarded as more widely separated from the Apes, than the different families of them are from each other. The first quadrumanous fossil which has been discovered was found in the Himmalayahs by Lieuts. Baker and Durand in 1830. J It has proved to belong, like subsequently discovered quadru manous fossils in the same district (the Sewalik (Miocene) tertiaries), to the Indian genus Semnopi- thecus. The next discovery was made by William Colchester, in 1839, in a bed of whitish sand, beneath a stratum of tenacious blue clay situated by the side of the river Deben, about a mile from Wcodbridge in the parish of Kingston, in Suffolk. This deposit is referred by all geologists to the eocene period, and the fossils were determined by Professor Owen to belong to a genus of Monkeys which he called Eopithecus, and which had its nearest affinities with Macacus. Since then, however, he has (1862) retracted this opinion, and with more ample materials at his command has pronounced it to belong to the genus Hyracotherium, an animal allied to the PaLjeOTHERIUM. This is a very important correction, for " there is now no eocene Monkey known to palaeontologists, unless M. Riitimeycr is right in referring to this family a small fragment of a jaw with three molar teeth found in the upper eocene strata of the Swiss Jura."§ * Owen, on "The Characters, Principles of Division, X For an account of the various discoveries of the and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalian." In " Linn, fossil remains of Monkeys, see a paper by Prof. Owen on Soc. Proc." 1857. the Gorilla in "Proc. Zool. Soc.," 1859, p. 18. t Huxley in "Nat. Hist. Rev." Jan. 1861, ct seq., § " Elements of Geology." By Sir Charles Lyell. Sixth and "Evidences as to the Man's place in Nature." By Edition, London, 1865. p. 292. Thomas Henry Huxley. London, 1863. 74 . MAMMALS. A monkey's molar tooth was taken from the pliocene beds of Essex, which has been determined to be most closely allied to the Macacos Sinicus (a common species in captivity, whence doubt has been thrown on the authenticity of the fossil, but it is believed by Owen to be perfectly genuine). The remains of a monkey of gigantic size (four feet in height) were discovered in 1839, with other bones, by Dr. Lund, in a bone-cave in limestone in Brazil. Its molar dentition showed it to belong to the platyrrhine family now peculiar to South America ; the New- world monkeys having four more teeth than the Old - world, a supernumerary molar in each side of each jaw. It was described as a new genus under the name of Protopithecus. This belonged to the pliocene period. The lower jaw; and teeth of a small quadrumane was discovered by M. Lartet in a mioceno bed in the south of France, and described by him and De Blainville. These remains are so closely allied to those of the Gibbons, as scarcely to justify the generic separation which has been made for the genus to which it belonged under the name of Pliopithecus. A portion of a lower jaw with teeth, and the shaft of a humerus of a quadrumanous animal (Dryopithecus), equalling the size of those bones in man, have been discovered by M. Fontan of Saint-Gaudens, in a marly bed of upper miocene age, forming the base of the plateau on which that town is built. From this species, certain inferences have been drawn to the effect that this was a transition form between the Chimpanzee and Man, but on this point Professor Owen says : "There is no law of correlation, by which, from the portion with teeth of the Dryopithecus, can bo deduced the shape of the cranial characters determinative of affinity to man. All those characters which do determine the closer resemblance and affinity of the genus Troglodytes to man, and of the genus Hylobates to the tailed monkeys, are at present unknown in respect of the Dryopithecus. The statement by Sir C. Lyell, that the parts of the skeleton of Dryopithecus as yet known, ' are sufficient to show that in anatomical structure, as well as stature, it came nearer to man than any quadrumanous species, living or fossil, before known to zoologists,' is without the support of any adequate fact, and in contravention of most of those to be deduced from M. Lartet's figures of the fossils. Those parts of the Dryopithecus merely show — and the humerus in a striking manner — its nearer approach to the Gibbons ; the most probable conjecture being that it bore to them, in regard to size, the like relations which Dr. Lund's Protopithecus bore to the existing Mycetes." Mr. Albert Gaudry conducted some government excavations in Greece, which produced no less than twenty skulls of Monkeys, several jaws, and bonos from different parts of the body sufficient to enable him to make a drawing of the whole skeleton. This Grecian Monkey belongs to the genus Mesopithecus. It resembles in its skull the Semnopitmecus, but in its limbs the Macacus, and is thus an intermediate form between these genera. Whether it was a transitional type, as Mr. Gaudry seems to think, is another thing altogether. All that I say is that the two are by no means synonymous. Besides these, ten other supposed species have been recorded, but all upon very imperfect materials. Such as they are, two species are from South America, three from Asia, and five from Europe.* With reference to this, Dr. Vogt says : — " Twenty years ago fossil Monkeys were unknown, now we have nearly a dozen : who can tell that we may not in a few years know fifty ? A year ago no intermediate form between Semnopithecus and Macacus was known : now we possess a whole skeleton : who can assert that in ten, twenty, or fifty years we may not possess intermediate forms between man and ape?"f * Voqt's " Lectures on Man." Translated by Anthropol. Soc. p. 454. Longman and Co. 1864. + Ibid.loc. cit. MONKEYS. 75 So thought Dr. J. W. Dawson, principal of M'Gill College, Montreal, an acute zoologist. He, like Dr. Vogt, predicted that if any osseous remains of antediluvian man should be discovered, they would prohahly present characters so different from those of modern races, that they might be regarded as belonging to a distinct species.* But in a recent paper, he confesses, somewhat despondingly, that " this anticipation has not yet been realized."! To be sure he qualifies the confession by the phrase, "with perhaps one exception,1' and that is the Neanderthal skull; which is not an exception (at least is not thought so by those who have no theory to support). The geographical distribution of the recent species of Monkeys ranges everywhere between, and does not extend far beyond, the Tropics. The only district where they do reach beyond a tropic is Paraguay. The same question which met us in considering the original starting-point of Man again occurs in the Monkey. We had (wo races of Man, the black and white. We have in like manner two sections of Monkeys, those of the New World and those of the Old, which latter arc in various respects more nearly allied to Man. When guessing at the relative antiquity of the two races of Man, I gave the preference in age to the black man, and indulged in the speculation that that race peopled the supposed submerged Pacific continent, and that the point through which the passage from the black man to the white had been made was to be sought in the direction of South America. There are objections to tracing the Monkeys in the same way. If we make the species found in Africa, India, and the Indian Archipelago, the- corresponding equivalent of Man in that region, and therefore older than the species in South America, we reverse the order of dispersal which we have supposed to have occurred in Man ; we place the highest Monkeys where the lowest Men are. But the cases are not parallel. Supposing Monkeys to have had their origin on the same ground as Man, and to have colonized South America, as he may have done, the introduction of species there may have taken place before the advanced forms of Monkeys had come into being. If, by the power of an enchanter, we could see everything as it stood at the period of that colonization, we might find that the colonists were then more advanced than their Old-world ancestors, and that the higher types have come into being in the African region subsequently to that date. As already mentioned, Professor Agassiz has pointed out the close degrees of affinity which exist between allied species of animals possessed of a high degree of organisation. He remarks that the Orang Outangs, which have been divided by some into four species, have been considered by other naturalists as forming but a single one ; and the genus of long-armed Orangs, Kyi.ouates (the Gibbons of English naturalists), is considered by some as containing eleven species, while others make but two or three. J A like remark may now be made on the Chimpanzees, of which five so-called species have been described. The same is to be observed of the Monkeys in the New World. The pre hensile-tailed species have been reduced by one author (Wagner) $j to two, of which he regards the second as doubtful, while Reichenbach || describes and figures no less than thirty-seven. Dr. Slack has drawn a better medium between the extremes of these authors, and reckons them at fifteen. The Monkeys furnish several illustrations in favour of the former existence of a now submerged Pacific or Indo-African continent. * Dawson, J. W. "Archia," p. 237. § Wagner, A. "Die VollstJindigste Naturgeschichte t Dawson, J. W. in " Ediu. New Phil. Jour." Jan. der Affen," part i. 1864, p. 53. || Schrkbeu's " Saugethierc." Supplement Band. vol. X "Proceed. American Acad. Arts and Sciences," vol. i. p. 207. 1840. iii. p. 7. 1857. 7(5 MAMMALS. For example, the Anthropoid Monkeys arc found both in West Africa, and Borneo and Sumatra ; and although the species which come from these two so widely separated countries differ a good deal in appearance they are undoubtedly pretty closely connected. It is impossible to avoid supposing that when India was connected with Africa, some other forms of anthropoid Monkeys existed in the supposed continent, now the Indian Sea, and stretched across it all the way to Zanguebar, and from thence to the Gaboon, through the tropical or equatorial band of forest, which, it is almost certain, spans Central Africa ; and although far from likely, other forms of anthropoid Monkeys may yet be -found there, wherever the climate is suitable for them. In other classes of animals recent researches have detected, on the east coast, and far in the interior, new species of genera, which had previously been supposed confined to the west coast, as, for example, new species of the Goliath beetle, a remarkable West African form, which, moreover, has also affinities with species found in the Indian Archipelago. The Baboons furnish another instance of Monkeys nearly allied to each other being found both in Africa, and on the relics of the sunken continent in the east, and nowhere else. Map 9 shows first, that the true Baboons are all found south of the Saharan barrier, supporting the conclusion arrived at in last chapter, that the old Africa of which we speak, or Africa proper, was bounded on the north by the Saharan barrier, whether that were desert or sea ; and next that one, if not two, allied species of Baboons also exist in Celebes. They arc true Baboons, but are well distin guished from the African type, in that the latter have their nostrils at the end of their muzzle like a dog, while the Celebes species have them on the front of their face like other monkeys, without a projecting muzzle. If it be true that a single straggling species of Cercopithecus (a genus peculiar to Africa, and more especially West Africa) exists in the Philippine Isles or in Celebes and Timor, as stated by Dr. Sclatcr,* the evidence of relationship between the species of Africa and the eastern remnants of the submerged continent will be still stronger. Mr. Wallace, however, who has had excellent opportunities of observation, doubts the accuracy of Dr. Sclater's information on this point. The section to which the species of Monkeys belong, and the locality whence they come, are easily distinguishable by the physical characters of the individuals. The Old-world Monkeys have a narrow septum, or division, between the nostrils, whence they have been called Catarriiini ; the New-world species, a broad division, hence their name Platyrruini. None of the New-world species have cheek-pouches or callosities ; none of the Old-world species have prehensile tails. Whenever we sec an individual with a prehensile tail we may be sure it is American ; when ever we see one with cheek-pouches it comes from the Old World. As already mentioned, also, the Old-world species have a tooth less on each side of each jaw, and they have the " yellow spot" on the retina, which is found in Man, which the New-world Monkeys are said not to have.f Catarrhini — Old-world Monkeys. (Maps 8 and 9.) The most important members of this family are the — Anthropoid Monkeys. (Map 8.) They consist of the Orang Utangs, the Chimpanzee, and * Dr. Sclater in " Proceed. Linn. Soc." vol. ii. p. 153. could never obtain materials. I suggest the examination 1858. as an interesting inquii-y to any naturalist or medical man + I made several ineffectual attempts to get my friends who may have opportunities in the country itself. There to examine or to send me home eyes of the South Amo- is little doubt that the "yellow spot" will be present, but ricanludian tribes themselves, in order to ascertain whether if it were not,- what a curious new source of speculation the yellow spot is present in the retina of their eyes, but would be opened to us ! Dty r S-jitL. ."]*-!.- ■ |l1- [Document text truncated for crawler view.]