The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
And not only so, but, while this unity of creation prevails throughout
the entire epoch as a whole, there is the same variety of geographical
distribution, the same circumscription of faunae within distinct
zooelogical provinces, as at the present time. The Fishes of
Massachusetts Bay are not the same as those of Chesapeake Bay, nor those
of Chesapeake Bay the same as those of Pamlico Sound, nor those of
Pamlico Sound the same as those of the Florida coast. This division of
the surface of the earth into given areas within which certain
combinations of animals and plants are confined is not peculiar to the
present creation, but has prevailed in all times, though with
ever-increasing diversity, as the surface of the earth itself assumed a
greater variety of climatic conditions. D'Orbigny and others were
mistaken in assuming that faunal differences have been introduced only
in the last geological epochs. Besides these adjoining zooelogical faunae,
each epoch is divided, as we have seen, into a number of periods,
occupying successive levels one above another, and differing
specifically from each other in time as zooelogical provinces differ from
each other in space. In short, every epoch is to be looked upon from two
points of view: as a unit, complete in itself, having one character
throughout, and as a stage in the progressive history of the world,
forming part of an organic whole.
* * * * *
As the Jurassic epoch was ushered in by the upheaval of the Jura, so its
close was marked by the upheaval of that system of mountains called the
Cote d'Or. With this latter upheaval began the Cretaceous epoch, which
we will examine with special reference to its subdivision into periods,
since the periods in this epoch have been clearly distinguished, and
investigated with especial care. I have alluded in the preceding article
to the immediate contact of the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs in
Switzerland, affording peculiar facilities for the direct comparison of
their organic remains. But the Cretaceous deposits are well known, not
only in this inland sea of ancient Switzerland, but in a number of
European basins, in France, in the Pyrenees, on the Mediterranean
shores, and also in Syria, Egypt, India, and Southern Africa, as well as
on our own continent. In all these localities, the Cretaceous remains,
like those of the Jurassic epoch, have one organic character, distinct
and unique. This fact is especially significant, because the contact of
their respective deposits is in many localities so immediate and
continuous that it affords an admirable test for the development-theory.
If this is the true mode of origin of animals, those of the later
Jurassic beds must be the progenitors of those of the earlier Cretaceous
deposits. Let us see now how far this agrees with our knowledge of the
physiological laws of development.
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