Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/75

Rh Carnivora, and Cetacea. But the Chiroptera are extreme modifications of the Insectivora, just as the Cetacea are extreme modifications of the Carnivorous type; and therefore it is to my mind incredible that monodelphous Insectivora and Carnivora should not have been abundantly developed, along with Ungulata, in the Mesozoic epoch. But if this be the case, how much further back must we go to find the common stock of the monodelphous Mammalia? As to the Didelphia, if we may trust the evidence which seems to be afforded by their very scanty remains, a Hypsiprymnoid form existed at the epoch of the Trias, side by side with a carnivorous form. At the epoch of the Trias, therefore, the Marsupialia must have already existed long enough to have become differentiated into carnivorous and herbivorous forms. But the Monotremata are lower forms than the Didelphia, which last are intercalary between the Ornithodelphia and the Monodelphia. To what point of the Palæozoic epoch, then, must we, upon any rational estimate, relegate the origin of the Monotremata?

The investigation of the occurrence of the classes and of the orders of the Sauropsida in time points in exactly the same direction. If, as there is great reason to believe, true Birds existed in the Triassic epoch, the ornithoscelidous forms by which Reptiles passed into Birds must have preceded them. In fact there is, even at present, considerable ground for suspecting the existence of Dinosauria in the Permian formations; but, in that case, lizards must be of still earlier date. And if the very small differences which are observable between the Crocodilia of the older Mesozoic formations and those of the present day furnish any sort of approximation towordstowards [sic] an estimate of the average rate of change among the Sauropsida, it is almost appalling to reflect how far back in Palæozoic times we must go before we can hope to arrive at that common stock from which the Crocodilia, Lacertilia, Ornithoscelida, and Plesiosauria, which had attained so great a development in the Triassic epoch, must have been derived.

The Amphibia and Pisces tell the same story. There is not a single class of vertebrated animals which, when it first appears, is represented by analogues of the lowest known members of the same class. Therefore, if there is any truth in the doctrine of evolution, every class must be vastly older than the first record of its appearance upon the surface of the globe. But if considerations of this kind compel us to place the origin of vertebrated animals at a period sufficiently distant from the Upper Silurian, in which the first Elasmobranchs and Ganoids occur, to allow of the evolution of such fishes as these from a Vertebrate as simple as the Amphioxus, I can only repeat that it is appalling to speculate upon the extent to which that origin must have preceded the epoch of the first recorded appearance of vertebrate life.

Such is the further commentary which I have to offer upon the statement of the chief results of palæontology which I formerly ventured to lay before you.