Russel Wallace has recently
claimed ("The World of Life," 1910) that there is a clear
purposive arrangement in the whole chain of developments which
leads to the appearance of the grasses. He says that "the very
puzzling facts" of the immense reptilian development in the
Mesozoic can only be understood on the supposition that they were
evolved "to keep down the coarser vegetation, to supply animal
food for the larger Carnivora, and thus give time for higher
forms to obtain a secure foothold and a sufficient amount of
varied form and structure" (p. 284).
Every insistence on the close connection of the different strands
in the web of life is welcome, but Dr. Wallace does not seem to
have learned the facts accurately. There is nothing "puzzling"
about the Mesozoic reptilian development; the depression of the
land, the moist warmth, and the luscious vegetation of the later
Triassic and the Jurassic amply explain it. Again, the only
carnivores to whom they seem to have supplied food were reptiles
of their own race. Nor can the feeding of the herbivorous
reptiles be connected with the rise of the Angiosperms. We do not
find the flowering plants developing anywhere in those vast
regions where the great reptiles abounded; they invade them from
some single unknown region, and mingle with the pines and
ginkgoes, while the cyeads alone are destroyed.
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