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America, a similar relationship is manifest, even to an uneducated eye, in the gigantic pieces of
like those of the armadillo, found in several parts of La Plata; and Professor Owen has shown in the most striking manner that most of the fossil mammals, buried there in such numbers, are related to South American types. This relationship is even more clearly seen in the wonderful collection of fossil bones made by MM. Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil. I was so much impressed with these facts that I strongly insisted, in 1839 and 1845, on this "law of the succession of types,"— on "this wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living." Professor Owen has subsequently extended the same generalisation to the mammals of the Old World. We see the same law in this
restorations of the extinct and gigantic birds of New Zealand. We see it also in the birds of the caves of Brazil. Mr. Woodward has shown that the same law holds good with
from the wide distribution of most
molluscs, it is not well displayed by them. Other cases could be added, as the relation between the extinct and living land-shells of Madeira; and between the extinct and living
of the Aralo-Caspian Sea. |
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| Now what does this remarkable law of the succession of the same types within the same areas mean? He would be a bold
after comparing the present climate of Australia and of parts of South
under the same latitude, would attempt to account, on the one
dissimilar physical
for the dissimilarity of the inhabitants of these two
and, on the other
similarity of conditions, for the uniformity of the same types in each
the later tertiary periods. Nor can it be pretended that it is an immutable law that marsupials should have been
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