Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/197

Rh other memoirs from which may be gathered the author's views on the subject. The essays of Prof. Hyatt, "On the Parallelism between the Different Stages of Life in the Individual and those in the Entire Group of the Molluscan Order Tetrabranchiata," "Reversions among Ammonites," "Evolution of the Arietidæ," "Genetic Relations of the Angulatidæ," "Abstract of a Memoir on the Biological Relations of the Jurassic Ammonites," are altogether too technical to condense into an address of this nature. It need hardly be mentioned that in these memoirs invaluable contributions are made to the doctrines of natural selection. And now we come to the most difficult part of our work: to compass within the limits of a few pages the magnificent discoveries of Leidy, Marsh, and Cope, in the rich fossiliferous beds of the West. The wonders are so unique and varied; they have been poured upon us with such prodigality of material and illustration, that one is baffled in an attempt to compass their characters, or to picture them as realities. When Darwin offered the imperfection of the geological record as possibly accounting for the absence of intermediate forms which might have existed, he was at once met by a series of protests so strenuous, and at the same time so specious, that they had their full weight in staying the force of that prophetic chapter. Darwin, in this chapter, distinctly stated that not only were there forms which had never yet been seen, owing to the imperfection of the geological record, but that time might possibly bring them to light, and, when discovered, we should have revealed to us intermediate characters which would connect widely-separated groups as they are recognized to-day.

Behold the prophet! Animals have been discovered, not only showing the characters of two widely-separated groups, but in some cases of three groups as they now appear. How distinct the hoofed quadrupeds, the carnivora, and the rodents, appear to-day! Yet here are discovered ancestors of these widely-separate groups, in which are contained in one individual the characters of all three! Of the ungulates with the perissodactyle foot, there have been discovered a large number of tapiroid forms allied to Paleotherium; others which, like Anchitherium, wonderfully fill the gap between the horse and forms lower down; a large suite of rhinocerotic creatures of strange character and enormous size; a great number of species of three-toed horse, some no larger than foxes, and with these a perplexing maze of deer, antelopes, sheep, camels, hippopotami, and pig-like animals, ruminant-like beasts, some of them not larger than an ordinary squirrel: a curious group, comprising a large number of species with characters intermediate between the pigs and ruminants. Prof. Flower, the great English osteologist, confesses that these forms completely break down the line of demarkation between them, and adds that "a gradual modification can be traced in the characters of the animals of this group, corresponding with their chronological