The Distribution of Marsupials.
This singular and lowly organised type of mammals constitutes almost the sole representative of the class in Australia and New Guinea, while it is entirely unknown in Asia, Africa, or Europe. It reappears in America, where several species of opossums are found; and it was long thought necessary to postulate a direct southern connection of these distant countries, in order to account for this curious fact of distribution. When, however, we look to what is known of the geological history of the marsupials the difficulty vanishes. In the Upper Eocene deposits of Western Europe the remains of several animals closely allied to the American opossums have been found; and as, at this period, a very mild climate prevailed far up into the arctic regions, there is no difficulty in supposing that the ancestors of the group entered America from Europe or Northern Asia during early Tertiary times.
But we must go much further back for the origin of the Australian marsupials. All the chief types of the higher mammalia were in existence in the Eocene, if not in the preceding Cretaceous period, and as we find none of these in Australia, that country must have been finally separated from the Asiatic continent during the Secondary or Mesozoic period. Now during that period, in the Upper and the Lower Oolite and in the still older Trias, the jaw-bones of numerous small mammalia have been found, forming eight distinct genera, which are believed to have been either marsupials or some allied lowly forms. In North America also, in beds of the Jurassic and Triassic formations, the remains of an equally great variety of these small mammalia have been discovered; and from the examination of more than sixty specimens, belonging to at least six distinct genera, Professor Marsh is of opinion that they represent a generalised type, from which the more specialised marsupials and insectivora were developed.
From the fact that very similar mammals occur both in Europe and America at corresponding periods, and in beds which represent a long succession of geological time, and that during the whole of this time no fragments of any higher forms have been discovered, it seems probable that both the northern continents (or the larger portion of their area) were then inhabited by no other mammalia than these, with perhaps other equally low types. It was, probably, not later than the Jurassic age when some of these primitive marsupials were able to enter Australia, where they have since remained almost completely isolated; and, being free from the competition of higher forms, they have developed into the great variety of types we now behold there. These occupy the place, and have to some extent acquired the form and structure of distinct orders of the higher mammals—the rodents, the insectivora, and the carnivora,—while still preserving the essential characteristics and lowly organisation of the marsupials. At a much later period—probably in late Tertiary times—the ancestors of the various species of rats and mice which now abound in Australia, and which, with the aerial bats, constitute its only forms of placental mammals, entered the country from some of the adjacent islands. For this purpose a land connection was not necessary, as these small creatures might easily be conveyed among the branches or in the crevices of trees uprooted by floods and carried down to the sea, and then floated to a shore many miles distant. That no actual land connection with, or very close approximation to, an Asiatic island has occurred in recent times, is sufficiently proved by the fact that no squirrel, pig, civet, or other widespread mammal of the Eastern hemisphere has been able to reach the Australian continent.
The Distribution of Tapirs.
These curious animals form one of the puzzles of geographical distribution, being now confined to two very remote regions of the globe—the Malay Peninsula and adjacent islands of Sumatra and Borneo, inhabited by one species, and tropical America, where there are three or four species, ranging from Brazil to Ecuador and Guatemala. If we considered these living forms only, we should be obliged to speculate on enormous changes of land and sea in order that these tropical animals might have passed from one country to the other. But geological discoveries have rendered all such hypothetical changes unnecessary. During Miocene and Pliocene times tapirs abounded over the whole of Europe and Asia, their remains having been found in the tertiary deposits of France, India, Burmah, and China. In both North and South America fossil remains of tapirs occur only in caves and deposits of Post-Pliocene age, showing that they are comparatively recent immigrants into that continent. They perhaps entered by the route of Kamchatka and Alaska, where the climate, even now so much milder and more equable than on the north-east of America, might have been warm enough in late Pliocene times to have allowed the migration of these animals. In Asia they were driven southwards by the competition of numerous higher and more powerful forms, but have found a last resting-place in the swampy forests of the Malay region.
What these Facts Prove.
Now these two cases, of the marsupials and the tapirs, are in the highest degree instructive, because they show us that, without any hypothetical bridging of deep oceans, and with only such changes of sea and land as are indicated by the extent of the comparatively shallow seas surrounding and connecting the existing continents, we are able to account for the anomaly of allied forms occurring only in remote and widely separated areas. These examples really constitute crucial tests, because, of all classes of animals, mammalia are least able to surmount physical barriers. They are obviously unable to pass over wide arms of the sea, while the necessity for constant supplies of food and water renders sandy deserts or snow-clad plains equally impassable. Then, again, the peculiar kinds of food on which alone many of them can subsist, and their liability to the attacks of other animals, put a further check upon their migrations. In these respects almost all other organisms have great advantages over mammals. Birds can often fly long distances, and can thus cross arms of the sea, deserts, or mountain ranges; insects not only fly, but are frequently carried great distances by gales of wind, as shown by the numerous cases of their visits to ships hundreds of miles from land. Reptiles, though slow of movement, have advantages in their greater capacity for enduring hunger or thirst, their power of resisting cold or drought in a state of torpidity, and they have also some facilities for migration across the sea by means of their eggs, which may be conveyed in crevices of timber or among masses of floating vegetable matter. And when we come to the vegetable kingdom, the means of transport are at their maximum, numbers of seeds having special adaptations for being carried by mammalia or birds, and for floating in the water, or through the air, while many are so small and so light that there is practically no limit to the distances they may be carried by gales and hurricanes.
We may, therefore, feel quite certain that the means of distribution that have enabled the larger mammalia to reach the most remote regions from a common starting-point, will be at least as efficacious, and usually far more efficacious, with all other land animals and plants; and if in every case the existing distribution of this class can be explained on the theory of oceanic and continental permanence, with the limited changes of sea and land already referred to, no valid objections can be taken against this theory founded on anomalies of distribution in other orders. Yet nothing is more common than for students of this or that group to assort that the theory of oceanic permanence is quite inconsistent with the distribution of its various species and genera. Because a few Indian genera and closely allied species of birds are found in Madagascar, a land termed "Lemuria" has been supposed to have united the two countries during a comparatively recent geological epoch; while the similarity of fossil plants and reptiles, from the Permian and Miocene formations of India and South Africa, has been adduced as further evidence of this connection. But there are also genera of snakes, of insects, and of plants, common to Madagascar and South America only, which have been held to necessitate a direct land connection between these countries. These views evidently refute themselves, because any such land connections must have led to a far greater similarity in the productions of the several countries than actually exists, and would besides render altogether inexplicable the absence of all the chief types of African and Indian mammalia from Madagascar, and its marvellous individuality in every department of the organic world.[169]
Powers of Dispersal as illustrated by Insular Organisms.