Contributions to the theory of natural selection. A series of essays ... By Alfred Russel Wallace ...

CREATION BY LA W. 299
in the Cryptodontia and the Dicnyodontia, and by the
combined lacertian and crocodilian characters in the
Thecodontia and Sauropterygia." In the same work
he tells us that, " the Anoplotherium, in several important characters resembled the embryo Ruminant,
but retained throughout life those marks of adhesion
to a generalized mammalian type;"-and assures us
that he has " never omitted a proper opportunity for
impressing the results of observations showing the
more generalized structures of extinct as compared
with the more specialized forms of recent animals."
Modern paleontologists have discovered hundreds of
examples of these more generalized or ancestral types.
In the time of Cuvier, the Ruminants and the Pachyderms were looked upon as two of the most distinct
orders of animals; but it is now demonstrated that
there once existed a variety of genera and species,
connecting by almost imperceptible grades such widely
different animals as the pig and the camel. Among
living quadrupeds we can scarcely find a more isolated
group than the genus Equus, comprising the horses,
asses, and Zebras; but through many species of Paloplotherium, Hippotherium, and Hipparion, and numbers
of extinct forms of Equus found in Europe, India, and
America, an almost complete transition is established
with the Eocene Anoplotherium and Paleotherium,
which are also generalized or ancestral types of the
Tapir and Rhinoceros. The recent researches of M.
Gaudry in Greece have furnished much new evidence
of the same character. In the Miocene beds of Pikerini