{ 385} The comparison between New Zealand and the Cape is given in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 389, vi. p. 542.
{ 386} In a corresponding discussion in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 393, vi. p. 546, stress is laid on the distribution of Batrachians not of reptiles.
{ 387} The whole argument is given--more briefly than here--in the _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 394, vi. p. 547.
{ 388} See _Origin_, Ed i. p. 393, vi. p. 547. The discussion is much fuller in the present Essay.
Before summing up all the facts given in this section on the present condition of organic beings, and endeavouring to see how far they admit of explanation, it will be convenient to state all such facts in the past geographical distribution of extinct beings as seem anyway to concern the theory of descent.
_Geographical distribution of extinct organisms._
I have stated that if the land of the entire world be divided into (we will say) three sections, according to the amount of difference of the terrestrial mammifers inhabiting them, we shall have three unequal divisions of (1st) Australia and its dependent islands, (2nd) South America, (3rd) Europe, Asia and Africa. If we now look to the mammifers which inhabited these three divisions during the later Tertiary periods, we shall find them almost as distinct as at the present day, and intimately related in each division to the existing forms in that division{ 389}. This is wonderfully the case with the several fossil Marsupial genera in the caverns of New South Wales and even more wonderfully so in South America, where we have the same peculiar group of monkeys, of a guanaco-like animal, of many rodents, of the Marsupial Didelphys, of Armadilloes and other Edentata. This last family is at present very characteristic of S. America, and in a late Tertiary epoch it was even more so, as is shown by the numerous enormous animals of the Megatheroid family, some of which were protected by an osseous armour like that, but on a gigantic scale, of the recent Armadillo. Lastly, over Europe the remains of the several deer, oxen, bears, foxes, beavers, field-mice, show a relation to the present inhabitants of this region; and the contemporaneous remains of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, hyæna, show a relation with the grand Africo-Asiatic division of the world. In Asia the fossil mammifers of the Himalaya (though mingled with forms long extinct in Europe) are equally related to the existing forms of the Africo-Asiatic division; but especially to those of India itself. As the gigantic and now extinct quadrupeds of Europe have naturally excited more attention than the other and smaller remains, the relation between the past and the present mammiferous inhabitants of Europe has not been sufficiently attended to. But in fact the mammifers of Europe are at present nearly as much Africo-Asiatic as they were formerly when Europe had its elephants and rhinoceroses, etc.; Europe neither now nor then possessed peculiar groups as does Australia and S. America. The extinction of certain peculiar forms in one quarter does not make the remaining mammifers of that quarter less related to its own great division of the world: though Tierra del Fuego possesses only a fox, three rodents, and the guanaco, no one (as these all belong to S. American types, but not to the most characteristic forms) would doubt for one minute <as to> classifying this district with S. America; and if fossil Edentata, Marsupials and monkeys were to be found in Tierra del Fuego, it would not make this district more truly S. American than it now is. So it is with Europe{ 390}, and so far as is known with Asia, for the lately past and present mammifers all belong to the Africo-Asiatic division of the world. In every case, I may add, the forms which a country has is of more importance in geographical arrangement than what it has not.