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But of his main theses he proves none, and what evidence we have tells against them. At the Museum of La Plata I found that the authorities were practically a unit in regarding his remains of tertiary men and proto- men as being either the remains of tertiary American monkeys or of American Indians from strata that were long post-tertiary.
In comparing preceding periods with the present and with each other, most naturalists and palaeontologists now appear to recognize a certain number of species as having survived from one epoch to the next, or even through more than one formation, especially from the Tertiary into the post-Tertiary period, and from that to the present age.
The stiff post-tertiary clays that compose the soil of these bluffs were in many places covered with a rich growth of timber, great magnolias and beautiful live oaks replacing the rank cottonwood and tangled willows of the lowlands, as well as the giant cypresses of the impenetrable swamps, with their mournful hangings of Spanish moss, and the wild grape binding them fast in a deadly embrace.
Consequently, if we do not find now, in Asia, all the intermediate links between the present wild horse and its Asiatic Post-Tertiary ancestors, this does not mean at all that the intermediate links have been exterminated. No such extermination has ever taken place.
When we consider how, as we extend our knowledge of the same plant over a wider area, new geographical varieties commonly present themselves, and then endeavour to imagine the number of forms of the genus Rubus which may now exist, or probably have existed, in Europe and in regions intervening between Europe and Australia, comprehending all which may have flourished in Tertiary and Post-Tertiary periods, we shall perceive how little stress should be laid on arguments founded on the assumed absence of missing links in the flora as it now exists.
"Gigantosteologie," at last the Professor burst out, between two words which I shall not record here. Then rushing on with renewed vigour, and with great animation: "Yes, gentlemen, I know all these things, and more. I know that Cuvier and Blumenbach have recognised in these bones nothing more remarkable than the bones of the mammoth and other mammals of the post-tertiary period.
It was probably evolved in the Post-Tertiary Era, about twenty million years ago, when the coming of the carnivores introduced direct body-to-body conflicts, and their concomitants, a quick and versatile nervous system. During the Tertiary epoch the earth basked in the heat of a tropical sun nearly everywhere on its surface.
That these volcanic rocks are of very recent origin is shown by the fact, ascertained by Verbeek, that beneath them occur deposits of Post-Tertiary age, and that these in turn rest on the Tertiary strata which are widely distributed through Sumatra, Java, and the adjoining islands. It was, as we have seen, in the month of May that, in the language of Chev.
Lastly, the post-tertiary deposits, such, at least, as are of marine origin, are most commonly restricted to much more moderate elevations above the sea-level than the tertiary strata.
In thus inverting what might at first seem to be the more natural order of historical research, we must bear in mind that each of the periods above enumerated, even the shortest, such as the Post-tertiary, or the Pliocene, Miocene, or Eocene, embrace a succession of events of vast extent, so that to give a satisfactory account of what we already know of any one of them would require many volumes.
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