Nevertheless, looking to a
remotely future epoch, there can 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 found only 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 palaeozoic forms of life in various parts of Europe,
they add, "If 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.
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