For if we confine our
attention either to the living or to the extinct alone, the series is
far less perfect than if we combine both into one general system. With
respect to the Vertebrata, whole pages could be filled with striking
illustrations from our great palaeontologist, Owen, showing how
extinct animals fall in between existing groups. Cuvier ranked the
Ruminants and Pachyderms, as the two most distinct orders of mammals;
but Owen has discovered so many fossil links, that he has had to alter
the whole classification of these two orders; and has placed certain
pachyderms in the same sub-order with ruminants: for example, he
dissolves by fine gradations the apparently wide difference between
the pig and the camel. In regard to the Invertebrata, Barrande, and a
higher authority could not be named, asserts that he is every day
taught that palaeozoic animals, though belonging to the same orders,
families, or genera with those living at the present day, were not at
this early epoch limited in such distinct groups as they now are.
Some writers have objected to any extinct species or group of species
being considered as intermediate between living species or groups. If
by this term it is meant that an extinct form is directly intermediate
in all its characters between two living forms, the objection is
probably valid. But I apprehend that in a perfectly natural
classification many fossil species would have to stand between living
species, and some extinct genera between living genera, even between
genera belonging to distinct families.
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