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From these analogies, and also from the ascendancy of fishes as the only known vertebrate, and therefore as the highest type in those ancient deposits, Agassiz considered this fauna as representing "the embryonic age of the reign of fishes;" and he sums up his results in conclusion in the following words: "The facts, taken as a whole, seem to me to show, not only that the fishes of the Old Red constitute an independent fauna, distinct from those of other deposits, but that they also represent in their organization the most remarkable analogy with the first phases of embryonic development in the bony fishes of our epoch, and a no less marked parallelism with the lower degrees of certain types of the class as it now exists on the surface of the earth."
After wandering for some time in a forest like this, the impression arises that the fauna is not now large enough to be in thorough keeping with the trees their age and size and number. The breadth of the arboreal landscape requires a longer list of living creatures, and creatures of greater bulk.
Has not the British wild-fowl supply greatly decreased during the past fifteen years? I strongly suspect that a careful investigation would reveal the fact that it has diminished. The Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire should look into the matter, and obtain a series of reports on the condition of the waterfowl to-day as compared with what it was twenty years ago.
Now it is the home of the large red and orange-colored iguanas, of which a number were captured, both alive and dead. These islands proved, indeed, admirable collecting grounds, the more interesting from the peculiarity of their local fauna. OFF GUATEMALA, July 29. . . .Our visit to the Galapagos has been full of geological and zoological interest.
The Locusts, the Crickets, and the Scolopendrae are the last representatives of a very ancient world, of an extinct fauna, of an early creation, whose perverse and unbridled instincts were given free vent, when creation was as yet but dimly outlined, "still making the earliest essays of its organizing forces"; when the primitive Orthoptera, "the obscure forebears of those of to-day, were "sowing the wild oats of a frantic rut, "in the colossal forests of the secondary period; by the borders of the vast lakes, full of crocodiles, and antediluvian marshes, which in Provence were shaded by palms, and strange ferns, and giant Lycopodia, never as yet enlivened by the song of a bird.
The third fauna agrees with the Upper Silurian of the same author. These numbers have since been almost doubled by subsequent investigations in the same country. Fossils of the lowest Fossiliferous Beds in Bohemia, or "Primordial Zone" of Barrande. Paradoxides Bohemicus, Barr. Conocoryphe striata. Syn. Conocephalus striatus, Emmrich. One-half natural size. Agnostus integer, Beyrich.
How much of the original flora of north China exists to-day only in these forests I would not dare say, for I am not a botanist, but it can be hardly less than the fauna of which I know. If China could but realize before it is too late how priceless a treasure is being hewed and burned to nothingness and take the first step in conservation by making a National Park of the Eastern Tombs!
He is a student of the people and of the country, speaks Malay fluently, and for a European seems to have a sympathetic understanding of the Malays, is studying the Chinese and their language, as well as the flora, fauna, and geology of the country, and is altogether unpretending. I have formed a very high opinion of him and should rely implicitly on anything which he told me as a fact.
But what was of first importance, we had covered an enormous extent of diverse country and learned much about the distribution of the fauna of northern Yün-nan.
There were none of the bovine tribe, as the buffalo and musk-ox of North America; and no large deer, as the elk and moose of the Northern latitudes. The deer of South America, of which there are several undescribed species, are all small animals. The tapir, then, in point of size takes precedence in the South-American fauna.
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