| → the present inhabitants of Europe; 1869 1872 |
| those which now live here; 1859 1860 1861 1866 |
|
| → now being deposited 1869 |
| deposited at the present day 1859 1860 1861 1866 |
| now deposited 1872 |
|
|
that the existing productions of the United States are more closely related to those which lived in Europe during certain
tertiary stages, than to
→the present inhabitants of Europe;
and if this be so, it is evident that fossiliferous beds
→now being deposited
on the shores of North America would hereafter be liable to be classed with somewhat older European beds. Nevertheless, looking to a remotely future epoch, there
be little doubt that all the more modern
marine
formations, namely, the upper pliocene, the pleistocene and strictly modern beds, of Europe, North and South America, and Australia, from containing fossil remains in some degree allied, and from not including those forms which are
in the older underlying deposits, would be correctly ranked as simultaneous in a geological sense. |
|
| The fact of the forms of life changing simultaneously, in the above large sense, at distant parts of the world, has greatly struck those admirable observers, MM. de Verneuil and d'Archiac. After referring to the parallelism of the palæozoic forms of life in various parts of Europe, they add,
struck by this strange sequence, we turn our attention to North America, and there discover a series of analogous phenomena, it will appear certain that all these modifications of species, their extinction, and the introduction of new ones, cannot be owing to mere changes in marine currents or other causes more or less local and temporary, but depend on general laws which govern the whole animal kingdom." M. Barrande has made forcible remarks to precisely the same effect. It is, indeed, quite futile to look to changes of currents, climate, or other physical conditions, as the cause of these great mutations in the forms of life throughout the world, under the most different climates. We must, as Barrande has remarked,
|
