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The pliocene mammals are like the existing ones, because such was the plan of creation; and we find rudimental organs and similarity of plan, because it has pleased the Creator to set before Himself a "divine exemplar or archetype," and to copy it in His works; and somewhat ill, those who hold this view imply, in some of them.
Indeed, the analogy goes so far that the same line which through the Indian Archipelago separates the present Australian animal and plant world from the Asiatic, forms also the separating line for the geological zones of the Pliocene epoch. All these are facts which render quite inevitable the idea of an origin of the higher organic species of to-day through descent.
It is claimed by many distinguished authorities that flints slightly touched by the hand of man, or at least used as implements by man, are found in abundance in England, France, and Germany, and belong to the Pliocene period. Continental authorities even refer some of them to the Miocene and the last part of the Oligocene.
It is subdivided into four sections the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. During these periods there was a very varied development of higher plant and animal forms; the fauna and flora of our planet approached nearer and nearer to the character that they bear to-day. In particular, the most advanced class, the mammals, began to preponderate.
Now the truth which Mr. Darwin perceived and promulgated as "the law of the succession of types" is, that, in all these provinces, the animals found in Pliocene or later deposits are closely affined to those which now inhabit the same provinces; and that, conversely, the forms characteristic of other provinces are absent.
We fell into the most intimate talk, which lasted all the way to Avonmouth indeed, so interested was I that I very nearly passed through the place without knowing it. He had the defects as well as the virtues of his class, for he was absolutely reactionary in his views. We discussed religion with fervour, and his theology was somewhere about the Early Pliocene.
They were masters of the entire northern hemisphere during the middle Tertiary, but in Europe during the Pliocene they declined, from unknown causes, and gave place to the other branch of cats, which includes the lions, tigers, and leopards. In the Americas the saber-tooth tigers long survived the epoch.
Let us turn to the facts, and see how far they fulfil these requirements of the doctrine of evolution. In Europe abundant remains of horses are found in the Quaternary and later Tertiary strata as far as the Pliocene formation. But these horses, which are so common in the cave-deposits and in the gravels of Europe, are in all essential respects like existing horses.
It will be seen in the description given in the last chapter of the Post- pliocene formations of the British Isles that they comprise a large proportion of those commonly termed glacial, characterised by shells which, although referable to living species, usually indicate a colder climate than that now belonging to the latitudes where they occur fossil.
For the sake of clearness and brevity, I proposed to give short technical names to these sets of strata, or the periods to which they respectively belonged. I called the first or oldest of them Eocene, the second Miocene, and the third Pliocene.
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