News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-09-11
WHERE DID LIFE BEGIN
Theory that Animal and Vegetable Life
Commenced at the Poles.

A theory has been enunciated that the
poles were first fitted to produce life,
which consequently commenced at the
northern and southern extremities of the
globe, developing independently, but,
to certain extent, corresponding, since
conditions were similar. By the secular
cooling of the globe the poles ultimately
became untitled to support life, and
such forms as did not perish in the
changes of the earth's surface slowly
migrated toward the equator, changing
IN the course of ages, sand ultimately
giving rise to fauna which, over most
of the globe, consists of a mixture of
northern and southern forms.
Many facts derived from the Northern
Hemisphere lend support to this theory,
and the Southern Hemisphere has re-
Gently added new facts which tell in the
same direction. The animals of the
Northern Hemisphere are still almost
identical throughout the worlds circuit.
The same families and even the same
species of mammals and birds are COM
mopi to the north of the Old World and
of the New. To give few examples -
The elk or moose, the reindeer, the
Europe and Asia, are specifically iden-
teal with those of America. The bison
OF Americans closely allied to the aurochs
OF Europe, the brown bear of Europe to
our own grizzly. the stag to the wapiti
or elk, and SO on.
Remains of mammals now regarded as
tropical-such as the elephant, hippo
potamus. rhinoceros, hyena, lion, etc.
are common in the tertiary strata of
temperate and even Arctic regions.
This is proof of Southern migration
when climate changed. In the southern
point of South America, in desolate
| Patagonia have been found mammalian
remains, which tend to show that the
tertiary fauna of Patagonia preceded
that of the Argentine Republic, to the
north of it. Forms of the pampas are
| there, but are somewhat more general
lied, as though older. Hooker has
shown that seventy-seven species OF
plants are common to South America,
New Zealand and Tasmania. A small
family of fishes (galaridCe) and the mar
supialia (kangaroos, wolboat, oppossum,
etc. are Australian and South Ameri-
| can.
A sort of submarine plateau connects
Staten Island (part of the Terre del
Fuego Archipelago) with South Georgia
and other antarctic lands, and it seems
not unlikely that great antarctic CONT
nent once existed, the remains of which
are Australia, New Zealand, etc., on one
hand, and Patagonia on the other. In
Australia the marsupialia multiplied,
and spreading northward mingled with
the bOreal fauna, that had been driven
southwark. In South America the mar
supialla did not greatly multiply, though
they spread; after the upheaval of the
| Isthmus of Panama into Northern
America, where they are represented by
! the opossum.
The edentata (sloths, armadillos, ant
eaters and their relations) first appeared
in Patagonia in the miocene period, and
| spreading northward, became the char
acteristic animals of South America.
Edentates (the aard. vark or Cape ant
eater, and the pangolins or scaly anteat-
ers) occur also in Africa, which was
probably once connected southwark with
the ancient Antartic continent.
In many cases the animals of north
ern origin, which are the more numer-
GUS, can be distinguished from the south
ern, but in other cases we cannot dis
tinguish them, since, on the one hand,
animals which naturalists place in the
same family on account of resem blances
in structure, may very possibly have
had distinct ancestry, and, on the
other hand, the northern forms, which
evidently predominant, have not only
varied greatly in the course of ages, but
have penetrated far toward the southern
extremities of the continents. AS re-
CARDS the northern hemisphere, the re-
semblances between the fishes, insects
and mollusca of the old world and the
new are even more striking than those
of the higher animals. philadelphia
Record