ON THE SUCCESSION OF THE SAME TYPES WITHIN THE SAME AREAS, DURING THE LATER
TERTIARY PERIODS.
Mr. Clift many years ago showed that the fossil mammals from the Australian
caves were closely allied to the living marsupials of that continent. In
South America, a similar relationship is manifest, even to an uneducated
eye, in the gigantic pieces of armour, like those of the armadillo, found
in several parts of La Plata; and Professor Owen has shown in the most
striking manner that most of the fossil mammals, buried there in such
numbers, are related to South American types. This relationship is even
more clearly seen in the wonderful collection of fossil bones made by MM.
Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil. I was so much impressed with
these facts that I strongly insisted, in 1839 and 1845, on this "law of the
succession of types,"--on "this wonderful relationship in the same
continent between the dead and the living." Professor Owen has
subsequently extended the same generalisation to the mammals of the Old
World. We see the same law in this author's restorations of the extinct
and gigantic birds of New Zealand. We see it also in the birds of the
caves of Brazil. Mr. Woodward has shown that the same law holds good with
sea-shells, but, from the wide distribution of most molluscs, it is not
well displayed by them. Other cases could be added, as the relation
between the extinct and living land-shells of Madeira; and between the
extinct and living brackish water-shells of the Aralo-Caspian Sea.
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