There is a great similarity in South America and Australia between still
living and extinct species of animals. In New Holland, fossil remains of
the kangaroo have been found, and in New Zealand the semi-foxxilized bones
of an enormous bird, resembling the ostrich, the dinornis of Owen,* which is
nearly allied to the present spteryx, and but little so to the recently
extinct dronte (dodo) of the island of Rodriguez.
[[footnote] *[See 'American Journal of Science', vol. xiv., p. 187; and
'Medals of Creation', vol. ii., p. 817; 'Trans. Zoolog. Society of London',
vol. ii; 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 129.] -- Tr.
The form of the continental portions of the earth may, perhaps, in a great
measure, owe their elevation above the surrounding level of the water to the
eruption of quartzose porphyry, which overthrew with violence the first
great vegetation from which the matrial of our present coal measures was
formed. The portions of the earth's surface which we term plains are
nothing more than the broad summits of hills and mountains whose bases rest
on the bottom of the ocean. Every plain is, therefore, when considered
according to its submarine relations, an 'elevated plateau', whose
inequalities have been covered over by horizontal deposition of new
sedimentary formations and by the accumulation of alluvium.
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