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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Animals of the Past, by Frederic A. Lucas
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Animals of the Past
+
+Author: Frederic A. Lucas
+
+Release Date: November 14, 2011 [EBook #38013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANIMALS OF THE PAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    ANIMALS OF THE PAST
+
+    [Illustration: Phororhacos, a Patagonian Giant of the Miocene.
+    _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+    _Science for Everybody_
+
+
+
+
+    ANIMALS OF THE PAST
+
+    BY FREDERIC A. LUCAS
+
+
+    _Curator of the Division of Comparative Anatomy,
+    United States National Museum_
+
+    FULLY ILLUSTRATED
+
+    NEW YORK
+    McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
+    1901
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY S. S. MCCLURE CO.
+    1901, BY MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
+
+    PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, 1901.
+
+
+
+
+    TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+    INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY
+
+    Use of scientific names, xvi; estimates of age of earth, xvii;
+    restorations by Mr. Knight, xviii; Works of Reference, xix.
+
+
+    I. FOSSILS, AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED
+
+    Definition of fossils, 1; fossils may be indications of animals
+    or plants, 2; casts and impressions, 3; why fossils are not more
+    abundant, 4; conditions under which fossils are formed, 5;
+    enemies of bones, 6; Dinosaurs engulfed in quicksand, 8;
+    formation of fossils, 9; petrified bodies frauds, 10; natural
+    casts, 10; leaves, 13; incrustations, 14; destruction of
+    fossils, 15; references, 17.
+
+
+    II. THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATES
+
+    Methods of interrogating Nature, 18; thickness of sedimentary
+    rocks, 20; earliest traces of life, 21; early vertebrates
+    difficult of preservation, 22; armored fishes, 23; abundance of
+    early fishes, 25; destruction of fish, 26; carboniferous sharks,
+    29; known mostly from teeth and spines, 30; references, 32.
+
+
+    III. IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST
+
+    Records of extinct animals, 33; earliest traces of animal life,
+    34; formation of tracks, 35; tracks in all strata, 36; discovery
+    of tracks, 37; tracks of Dinosaurs, 39; species named from
+    tracks, 41; footprints aid in determining attitude of animals,
+    43; tracks at Carson City, 45; references, 47.
+
+
+    IV. RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS
+
+    The Mosasaurs, 49; history of the first known Mosasaur, 50; jaws
+    of reptiles, 53; extinction of Mosasaurs, 55; the sea-serpent,
+    56; Zeuglodon, 58; its habits, 59; Koch's Hydrarchus, 61; bones
+    collected by Mr. Schuchert, 63; abundance of sharks, 64; the
+    great Carcharodon, 65; arrangement of sharks' teeth, 67;
+    references, 68.
+
+
+    V. BIRDS OF OLD
+
+    Earliest birds, 70; wings, 71; study of young animals, 73; the
+    curious Hoactzin, 74; first intimation of birds, 76;
+    Arch�opteryx, 77; birds with teeth, 78; cretaceous birds, 79;
+    Hesperornis, 80; loss of power of flight, 81; covering of
+    Hesperornis, 82; attitude of Hesperornis, 83; curious position
+    of legs, 84; toothed birds disappointing, 85; early development
+    of birds, 86; eggs of early birds, 87; references, 88.
+
+
+    VI. THE DINOSAURS
+
+    Discovery of Dinosaur remains, 90; nearest relatives of
+    Dinosaurs, 91; relation of birds to reptiles, 92; brain of
+    Dinosaurs, 93; parallel between Dinosaurs and Marsupials, 95;
+    the great Brontosaurus, 96; food of Dinosaurs, 97; habits of
+    Diplodocus, 99; the strange Australian Moloch, 100; combats of
+    Triceratops, 101; skeleton of Triceratops, 102; Thespesius and
+    his kin, 104; the carnivorous Ceratosaurus, 106; Stegosaurus,
+    the plated lizard, 106; preferences, 109.
+
+
+    VII. READING THE RIDDLES OF THE ROCKS
+
+    Fossils regarded as sports of nature, 111; qualifications of a
+    successful collector, 112; chances of collecting, 114;
+    excavation of fossils, 115; strengthening fossils for shipment,
+    117; great size of some specimens, 118; the preparation of
+    fossils, 119; mistakes of anatomists, 120; reconstruction of
+    Triceratops, 121; distinguishing characters of bones, 122; the
+    skeleton a problem in mechanics, 124; clothing the bones with
+    flesh, 127; the covering of animals, 127; outside ornamentation,
+    129; probabilities in the covering of animals, 130; impressions
+    of extinct animals, 131; mistaken inferences from bones of
+    Mammoth, 133; coloring of large land animals, 134; color
+    markings of young animals, 136; references, 137.
+
+
+    VIII. FEATHERED GIANTS
+
+    Legend of the Moa, 139; our knowledge of the Moas, 141; some
+    Moas wingless, 142; deposits of Moa bones, 143; legend of the
+    Roc, 144; discovery of �pyornis, 145; large-sounding names, 146;
+    eggs of great birds, 147; the Patagonian Phororhacos, 149; the
+    huge Brontornis, 150; development of giant birds, 153;
+    distribution of flightless birds, 154; relation between
+    flightlessness and size, 156; references, 156.
+
+
+    IX. THE ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE
+
+    North America in the Eocene age, 160; appearance of early
+    horses, 163; early domestication of the horse, 165; the toes of
+    horses, 166; Miocene horses small, 167; evidence of genealogy of
+    the horse, 170; meaning of abnormalities, 170; changes in the
+    climate and animals of the West, 174; references, 176.
+
+
+    X. THE MAMMOTH
+
+    The story of the killing of the Mammoth, 177; derivation of the
+    word "mammoth," 178; mistaken ideas as to size of the Mammoth,
+    179; size of Mammoth and modern elephants, 180; finding of an
+    entire Mammoth, 182; birthplace of the Mammoth, 184; beliefs
+    concerning its bones, 185; the range of the animal, 186;
+    theories concerning the extinction of the Mammoth, 188; Man and
+    Mammoth, 189; origin of the Alaskan Live Mammoth Story, 190;
+    traits of the Innuits, 192; an entire Mammoth recently found,
+    194; references, 195.
+
+
+    XI. THE MASTODON
+
+    Differences between Mastodon and Mammoth, 198; affinities of the
+    Mastodon, 200; vestigial structures, 201; distribution of
+    American Mastodon, 203; first noticed in North America, 204;
+    thought to be carnivorous, 206; Koch's Missourium, 208; former
+    abundance of Mastodons, 209; appearance of the animal, 210; its
+    size, 211; was man contemporary with Mastodon? 213; the Lenape
+    stone, 215; legend of the big buffalo, 216; references, 218.
+
+
+    XII. WHY DO ANIMALS BECOME EXTINCT?
+
+    Extinction sometimes evolution, 221; over-specialization as a
+    cause for extinction, 222; extinction sometimes unaccountable,
+    223; man's capability for harm small in the past, 224; old
+    theories of great convulsions, 226; changes in nature slow, 227;
+    the case of Lingula, 228; local extermination, 229; the Moas and
+    the Great Auk, 232; the case of large animals, 233;
+    inter-dependence of living beings, 234; coyotes and fruit, 236;
+    Shaler on the Miocene flora of Europe, 236; man's desire for
+    knowledge, 238.
+
+    INDEX, 243
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+The original drawings, made especially for this book, are by Charles R.
+Knight and James M. Gleeson, under the direction of Mr. Knight. The fact
+that the originals of these drawings have been presented to and accepted
+by the United States National Museum is evidence of their scientific
+value. Mr. Knight has been commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution,
+the United States National Museum, and the New York Museum of Natural
+History, to do their most important pictures of extinct animals. He is
+the one modern artist who can picture prehistoric animals with artistic
+charm of presentation as well as with full scientific accuracy. In this
+instance, the author has personally superintended the artist's work, so
+that it is as correct in every respect as present knowledge makes
+possible. Of the minor illustrations, some are by Mr. Bruce Horsfall, an
+artist attached to the staff of the New York Museum of Natural History,
+and all have been drawn with the help of and under the author's
+supervision.
+
+
+
+
+    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    Fig.                                                            Page
+
+    Phororhacos, a Patagonian Giant of the Miocene _From a Drawing
+    by Charles R. Knight_                                 _Frontispiece_
+
+    1. Diplomystus, an Ancient Member of the Shad Family _From the
+    fish-bed at Green River, Wyoming. From a specimen in the United
+    States National Museum._                                           4
+
+    2. Bryozoa, from the Shore of the Devonian Sea that Covered
+    Eastern New York _From a specimen in Yale University Museum,
+    prepared by Dr. Beecher._                                         10
+
+    3. Skeleton of a Radiolarian Very Greatly Enlarged                17
+
+    4. Cephalaspis and Loricaria, an Ancient and a Modern Armored
+    Fish                                                              24
+
+    5. Pterichthys, the Wing Fish                                     32
+
+    6. Where a Dinosaur Sat Down                                      38
+
+    7. Footprints of Dinosaurs on the Brownstone of the Connecticut
+    Valley _From a slab in the museum of Amherst College._            40
+
+    8. The Track of a Three-toed Dinosaur                             47
+
+    9. A Great Sea Lizard, _Tylosaurus Dyspelor From a drawing by
+    J. M. Gleeson._                                                   52
+
+    10. Jaw of a Mosasaur, Showing the Joint that Increased the
+    Swallowing Capacity of that Reptile                               54
+
+    11. Koch's Hydrarchus. Composed of Portions of the Skeletons of
+    Several Zeuglodons                                                62
+
+    12. A Tooth of Zeuglodon, One of the "Yoke Teeth," from which it
+    derives the name                                                  69
+
+    13. Arch�opteryx, the Earliest Known Bird _From the specimen in
+    the Berlin Museum._                                               70
+
+    14. Nature's Four Methods of Making a Wing: Bat, Pteryodactyl,
+    Arch�opteryx, and Modern Bird                                     72
+
+    15. Young Hoactzins                                               75
+
+    16. Hesperornis, the Great Toothed Diver _From a drawing by J.
+    M. Gleeson._                                                      82
+
+    17. Arch�opteryx _As Restored by Mr. Pycraft._                    89
+
+    18. Thespesius, a Common Herbivorous Dinosaur of the Cretaceous
+    _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._                            90
+
+    19. A Hind Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, the Largest of the
+    Dinosaurs                                                         96
+
+    20. A Single Vertebra of Brontosaurus                             97
+
+    21. Moloch, a Modern Lizard that Surpasses the Stegosaurs in All
+    but Size _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._                      100
+
+    22. Skeleton of Triceratops                                      103
+
+    23. The Horned Ceratosaurus, a Carnivorous Dinosaur _From a
+    drawing by J. M. Gleeson._                                       106
+
+    24. Stegosaurus, an Armored Dinosaur of the Jurassic _From a
+    drawing by Charles R. Knight._                                   108
+
+    25. Skull of Ceratosaurus _From a specimen in the United States
+    National Museum._                                                110
+
+    26. Triceratops, He of the Three-horned Face _From a statuette
+    by Charles R. Knight._                                           126
+
+    27. A Hint of Buried Treasures                                   137
+
+    28. Relics of the Moa                                            140
+
+    29. Eggs of Feathered Giants, �pyornis, Ostrich, Moa, Compared
+    with a Hen's Egg                                                 148
+
+    30. Skull of Phororhacos Compared with that of the Race-horse
+    Lexington                                                        151
+
+    31. Leg of a Horse Compared with that of the Giant Moa           152
+
+    32. The Three Giants, Phororhacos, Moa, Ostrich                  158
+
+    33. Skeleton of the Modern Horse and of His Eocene Ancestor      161
+
+    34. The Development of the Horse                                 168
+
+    35. The Mammoth _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._           176
+
+    36. Skeleton of the Mammoth in the Royal Museum of St.
+    Petersburg                                                       183
+
+    37. The Mammoth _As engraved by a Primitive Artist on a Piece of
+    Mammoth-Tusk._                                                   196
+
+    38. Tooth of Mastodon and of Mammoth                             199
+
+    39. The Missourium of Koch _From a Tracing of the Figure
+    Illustrating Koch's Description._                                207
+
+    40. The Mastodon _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._              210
+
+    41. The Lenape Stone, Reduced                                    219
+
+
+
+
+_INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY_
+
+
+_At the present time the interest in the ancient life of this earth is
+greater than ever before, and very considerable sums of money are being
+expended to dispatch carefully planned expeditions to various parts of
+the world systematically to gather the fossil remains of the animals of
+the past. That this interest is not merely confined to a few scientific
+men, but is shared by the general public, is shown by the numerous
+articles, including many telegrams, in the columns of the daily papers.
+The object of this book is to tell some of the interesting facts
+concerning a few of the better known or more remarkable of these extinct
+inhabitants of the ancient world; also, if possible, to ease the strain
+on these venerable animals, caused by stretching them so often beyond
+their due proportions._
+
+_The book is admittedly somewhat on the lines of Mr. Hutchinson's
+"Extinct Monsters" and "Creatures of Other Days," but it is hoped that
+it may be considered with books as with boats, a good plan to build
+after a good model. The information scattered through these pages has
+been derived from varied sources; some has of necessity been taken from
+standard books, a part has been gathered in the course of museum work
+and official correspondence; for much, the author is indebted to his
+personal friends, and for a part, he is under obligations to friends he
+has never met, who have kindly responded to his inquiries. The endeavor
+has been conscientiously made to exclude all misinformation; it is,
+nevertheless, entirely probable that some mistakes may have crept in,
+and due apology for these is hereby made beforehand._
+
+_The author expects to be taken to task for the use of scientific names,
+and the reader may perhaps sympathize with the old lady who said that
+the discovery of all these strange animals did not surprise her so much
+as the fact that anyone should know their names when they were found.
+The real trouble is that there are no common names for these animals.
+Then, too, people who call for easier names do not stop to reflect
+that, in many cases, the scientific names are no harder than others,
+simply less familiar, and, when domesticated, they cease to be hard:
+witness mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, boa constrictor, all of
+which are scientific names. And if, for example, we were to call the
+Hyracotherium a Hyrax beast it would not be a name, but a description,
+and not a bit more intelligible._
+
+_Again, it is impossible to indicate the period at which these creatures
+lived without using the scientific term for it--Jurassic, Eocene,
+Pliocene, as the case may be--because there is no other way of doing
+it._
+
+_Some readers will doubtless feel disappointed because they are not told
+how many years ago these animals lived. The question is often asked--How
+long ago did this or that animal live? But when the least estimate puts
+the age of the earth at only 10,000,000 years, while the longest makes
+it 6,000,000,000, it does seem as if it were hardly worth while to name
+any figures. Even when we get well toward the present period we find the
+time that has elapsed since the beginning of the Jurassic, when the
+Dinosaurs held carnival, variously put at from 15,000,000 to 6,000,000
+years; while from the beginning of the Eocene, when the mammals began to
+gain the supremacy, until now, the figures vary from 3,000,000 to
+5,000,000 years. So the question of age will be left for the reader to
+settle to his or her satisfaction._
+
+_The restorations of extinct animals may be considered as giving as
+accurate representations of these creatures as it is possible to make;
+they were either drawn by Mr. Knight, whose name is guarantee that they
+are of the highest quality, or by Mr. Gleeson, with the aid of Mr.
+Knight's criticism. That they are infallibly correct is out of the
+question; for, as Dr. Woodward writes in the preface to "Extinct
+Monsters," "restorations are ever liable to emendation, and the present
+... will certainly prove no exception to the rule." As a striking
+instance of this, it was found necessary at the last moment to change
+the figure of Hesperornis, the original life-like portrait proving to be
+incorrect in attitude, a fact that would have long escaped detection but
+for the Pan-American Exposition. The connection between the two is
+explained on page 76. However, the reader may rest assured that these
+restorations are infinitely more nearly correct than many figures of
+living animals that have appeared within the last twenty-five years, and
+are even now doing duty._
+
+_The endeavor has been made to indicate, at the end of each chapter, the
+museums in which the best examples of the animals described may be seen,
+and also some book or article in which further information may be
+obtained. As this book is intended for the general reader, references to
+purely technical articles have, so far as possible, been avoided, and
+none in foreign languages mentioned._
+
+_For important works of reference on the subject of paleontology, the
+reader may consult "A Manual of Paleontology," by Alleyne Nicholson and
+R. Lydekker, a work in two volumes dealing with invertebrates,
+vertebrates, and plants, or "A Text-Book of Paleontology," by Karl von
+Zittel, English edition, only the first volume of which has so far been
+published. An admirable book on the vertebrates is "Outlines of
+Vertebrate Paleontology," by Arthur Smith Woodward. It is to be
+understood that these are not at all "popular" in their scope, but
+intended for students who are already well advanced in the study of
+zo�logy._
+
+
+
+
+ANIMALS OF THE PAST I
+
+FOSSILS, AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED
+
+    "_How of a thousand snakes each one
+    Was changed into a coil of stone._"
+
+
+Fossils are the remains, or even the indications, of animals and plants
+that have, through natural agencies, been buried in the earth and
+preserved for long periods of time. This may seem a rather meagre
+definition, but it is a difficult matter to frame one that will be at
+once brief, exact, and comprehensive; fossils are not necessarily the
+remains of extinct animals or plants, neither are they, of necessity,
+objects that have become petrified or turned into stone.
+
+Bones of the Great Auk and Rytina, which are quite extinct, would hardly
+be considered as fossils; while the bones of many species of animals,
+still living, would properly come in that category, having long ago been
+buried by natural causes and often been changed into stone. And yet it
+is not essential for a specimen to have had its animal matter replaced
+by some mineral in order that it may be classed as a fossil, for the
+Siberian Mammoths, found entombed in ice, are very properly spoken of as
+fossils, although the flesh of at least one of these animals was so
+fresh that it was eaten. Likewise the mammoth tusks brought to market
+are termed fossil-ivory, although differing but little from the tusks of
+modern elephants.
+
+Many fossils indeed merit their popular appellation of petrifactions,
+because they have been changed into stone by the slow removal of the
+animal or vegetable matter present and its replacement by some mineral,
+usually silica or some form of lime. But it is necessary to include
+'indications of plants or animals' in the above definition because some
+of the best fossils may be merely impressions of plants or animals and
+no portion of the objects themselves, and yet, as we shall see, some of
+our most important information has been gathered from these same
+imprints.
+
+Nearly all our knowledge of the plants that flourished in the past is
+based on the impressions of their leaves left on the soft mud or smooth
+sand that later on hardened into enduring stone. Such, too, are the
+trails of creeping and crawling things, casts of the burrows of worms
+and the many footprints of the reptiles, great and small, that crept
+along the shore or stalked beside the waters of the ancient seas. The
+creatures themselves have passed away, their massive bones even are
+lost, but the prints of their feet are as plain to-day as when they were
+first made.
+
+Many a crustacean, too, is known solely or mostly by the cast of its
+shell, the hard parts having completely vanished, and the existence of
+birds in some formations is revealed merely by the casts of their eggs;
+and these natural casts must be included in the category of fossils.
+
+Impressions of vertebrates may, indeed, be almost as good as actual
+skeletons, as in the case of some fishes, where the fine mud in which
+they were buried has become changed to a rock, rivalling porcelain in
+texture; the bones have either dissolved away or shattered into dust at
+the splitting of the rock, but the imprint of each little fin-ray and
+every threadlike bone is as clearly defined as it would have been in a
+freshly prepared skeleton. So fine, indeed, may have been the mud, and
+so quiet for the time being the waters of the ancient sea or lake, that
+not only have prints of bones and leaves been found, but those of
+feathers and of the skin of some reptiles, and even of such soft and
+delicate objects as jelly fishes. But for these we should have little
+positive knowledge of the outward appearance of the creatures of the
+past, and to them we are occasionally indebted for the solution of some
+moot point in their anatomy.
+
+The reader may possibly wonder why it is that fossils are not more
+abundant; why, of the vast majority of animals that have dwelt upon the
+earth since it became fit for the habitation of living beings, not a
+trace remains. This, too, when some objects--the tusks of the Mammoth,
+for example--have been sufficiently well preserved to form staple
+articles of commerce at the present time, so that the carved handle of
+my lady's parasol may have formed part of some animal that flourished at
+the very dawn of the human race, and been gazed upon by her
+grandfather a thousand times removed. The answer to this query is that,
+unless the conditions were such as to preserve at least the hard parts
+of any creature from immediate decay, there was small probability of its
+becoming fossilized. These conditions are that the objects must be
+protected from the air, and, practically, the only way that this happens
+in nature is by having them covered with water, or at least buried in
+wet ground.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Diplomystus, an Ancient Member of the Shad
+Family. From the Fishbed at Green River, Wyoming. _From a specimen in
+the United States National Museum._]
+
+If an animal dies on dry land, where its bones lie exposed to the
+summer's sun and rain and the winter's frost and snow, it does not take
+these destructive agencies long to reduce the bones to powder; in the
+rare event of a climate devoid of rain, mere changes of temperature, by
+producing expansion and contraction, will sooner or later cause a bone
+to crack and crumble.
+
+Usually, too, the work of the elements is aided by that of animals and
+plants. Every one has seen a dog make way with a pretty good-sized bone,
+and the Hyena has still greater capabilities in that line; and ever
+since vertebrate life began there have been carnivorous animals of some
+kind to play the r�le of bone-destroyers. Even were there no carnivores,
+there were probably then, as now, rats and mice a-plenty, and few
+suspect the havoc small rodents may play with a bone for the grease it
+contains, or merely for the sake of exercising their teeth. Now and then
+we come upon a fossil bone, long since turned into stone, on which are
+the marks of the little cutting teeth of field mice, put there long,
+long ago, and yet looking as fresh as if made only last week. These
+little beasts, however, are indirect rather than direct agents in the
+destruction of bones by gnawing off the outer layers, and thus
+permitting the more ready entrance of air and water. Plants, as a rule,
+begin their work after an object has become partly or entirely buried in
+the soil, when the tiny rootlets find their way into fissures, and,
+expanding as they grow, act like so many little wedges to force it
+asunder.
+
+Thus on dry land there is small opportunity for a bone to become a
+fossil; but, if a creature so perishes that its body is swept into the
+ocean or one of its estuaries, settles to the muddy bottom of a lake or
+is caught on the sandy shoals of some river, the chances are good that
+its bones will be preserved. They are poorest in the ocean, for unless
+the body drifts far out and settles down in quiet waters, the waves
+pound the bones to pieces with stones or scour them away with sand,
+while marine worms may pierce them with burrows, or echinoderms cut
+holes for their habitations; there are more enemies to a bone than one
+might imagine.
+
+Suppose, however, that some animal has sunk in the depths of a quiet
+lake, where the wash of the waves upon the shore wears the sand or rock
+into mud so fine that it floats out into still water and settles there
+as gently as dew upon the grass. Little by little the bones are covered
+by a deposit that fills every groove and pore, preserving the mark of
+every ridge and furrow; and while this may take long, it is merely a
+matter of time and favorable circumstance to bury the bones as deeply as
+one might wish. Scarce a reader of these lines but at some time has cast
+anchor in some quiet pond and pulled it up, thickly covered with sticky
+mud, whose existence would hardly be suspected from the sparkling waters
+and pebbly shores. If, instead of a lake, our animal had gone to the
+bottom of some estuary into which poured a river turbid with mud, the
+process of entombment would have been still more rapid, while, had the
+creature been engulfed in quicksand, it would have been the quickest
+method of all; and just such accidents did take place in the early days
+of the earth as well as now. At least two examples of the great Dinosaur
+Thespesius have been found with the bones all in place, the thigh bones
+still in their sockets and the ossified tendons running along the
+backbone as they did in life. This would hardly have happened had not
+the body been surrounded and supported so that every part was held in
+place and not crushed, and it is difficult to see any better agency for
+this than burial in quicksand.
+
+If such an event as we have been supposing took place in a part of the
+globe where the land was gradually sinking--and the crust of the earth
+is ever rising and falling--the mud and sand would keep on accumulating
+until an enormously thick layer was formed. The lime or silica contained
+in the water would tend to cement the particles of mud and grains of
+sand into a solid mass, while the process would be aided by the pressure
+of the overlying sediment, the heat created by this pressure, and that
+derived from the earth beneath. During this process the animal matter of
+bones or other objects would disappear and its place be taken by lime or
+silica, and thus would be formed a layer of rock containing fossils. The
+exact manner in which this replacement is effected and in which the
+chemical and mechanical changes occur is very far from being definitely
+known--especially as the process of "fossilization" must at times have
+been very complicated.
+
+In the case of fossil wood greater changes have taken place than in the
+fossilization of bone, for there is not merely an infiltration of the
+specimen but a complete replacement of the original vegetable by mineral
+matter, the interior of the cells being first filled with silica and
+their walls replaced later on. So completely and minutely may this
+change occur that under the microscope the very cellular structure of
+the wood is visible, and as this varies according to the species, it is
+possible, by microscopical examination, to determine the relationship of
+trees in cases where nothing but fragments of the trunk remain.
+
+The process of fossilization is at best a slow one, and soft substances
+such as flesh, or even horn, decay too rapidly for it to take place, so
+that all accounts of petrified bodies, human or otherwise, are either
+based on deliberate frauds or are the result of a very erroneous
+misinterpretation of facts. That the impression or cast of a body
+_might_ be formed in nature, somewhat as casts have been made of those
+who perished at Pompeii, is true; but, so far, no authentic case of the
+kind has come to light, and the reader is quite justified in
+disbelieving any report of "a petrified man."
+
+Natural casts of such hard bodies as shells are common, formed by the
+dissolving away of the original shell after it had become enclosed in
+mud, or even after this had changed to stone, and the filling up of this
+space by the filtering in of water charged with lime or silica, which
+is there deposited, often in crystalline form. In this way, too, are
+formed casts of eggs of reptiles and birds, so perfect that it is
+possible to form a pretty accurate opinion as to the group to which they
+belong.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Bryozoa from the Shore of the Devonian Sea that
+Covered Eastern New York. _From a specimen in Yale University Museum,
+prepared by Dr. Beecher._]
+
+Sometimes it happens that shells or other small objects imbedded in
+limestone have been dissolved and replaced by silica, and in such cases
+it is possible to eat away the enveloping rock with acid and leave the
+silicified casts. By this method specimens of shells, corals, and
+bryozoans are obtained of almost lace-like delicacy, and as perfect as
+if only yesterday gathered at the sea-shore. Casts of the interior of
+shells, showing many details of structure, are common, and anyone who
+has seen clams dug will understand how they are formed by the entrance
+of mud into the empty shell.
+
+Casts of the kernels of nuts are formed in much the same way, and
+Professor E. H. Barbour has thus described the probable manner in which
+this was done. When the nuts were dropped into the water of the ancient
+lake the kernel rotted away, but the shell, being tough and hard, would
+probably last for years under favorable circumstances. Throughout the
+marls and clays of the Bad Lands (of South Dakota) there is a large
+amount of potash. This is dissolved by water, and then acts upon quartz,
+carrying it away in solution. This would find its way by infiltration
+into the interior of the nut. At the same time with this process,
+carrying lime carbonate in solution was going on, so that doubtless the
+stone kernels, consisting of pretty nearly equal parts of lime and
+silica, were deposited within the nuts. These kernels, of course, became
+hard and flinty in time, and capable of resisting almost any amount of
+weathering. Not so the organic shell; this eventually would decay away,
+and so leave the filling or kernel of chalcedony and lime.[1]
+
+[1] _Right here is the weak spot in Professor Barbour's explanation, and
+an illustration of our lack of knowledge. For it is difficult to see why
+the more enduring husk should not have become mineralized equally with
+the cavity within._
+
+"Fossil leaves" are nothing but fine casts, made in natural moulds, and
+all have seen the first stages in their formation as they watched the
+leaves sailing to the ground to be covered by mud or sand at the next
+rain, or dropping into the water, where sooner or later they sink, as we
+may see them at the bottom of any quiet woodland spring.
+
+Impressions of leaves are among the early examples of color-printing,
+for they are frequently of a darker, or even different, tint from that
+of the surrounding rock, this being caused by the carbonization of
+vegetable matter or to its action on iron that may have been present in
+the soil or water. Besides complete mineralization, or petrifaction,
+there are numerous cases of incomplete or semi-fossilization, where
+modern objects, still retaining their phosphate of lime and some animal
+matter even, are found buried in rock. This takes place when water
+containing carbonate of lime, silica, or sometimes iron, flows over beds
+of sand, cementing the grains into solid but not dense rock, and at the
+same time penetrating and uniting with it such things as chance to be
+buried. In this way was formed the "fossil man" of Guadeloupe, West
+Indies, a skeleton of a modern Carib lying in recent concretionary
+limestone, together with shells of existing species and fragments of
+pottery. In a similar way, too, human remains in parts of Florida have,
+through the infiltration of water charged with iron, become partially
+converted into limonite iron ore; and yet we know that these bones have
+been buried within quite recent times.
+
+Sometimes we hear of springs or waters that "turn things into stone,"
+but these tales are quite incorrect. Waters there are, like the
+celebrated hot springs of Auvergne, France, containing so much carbonate
+of lime in solution that it is readily deposited on objects placed
+therein, coating them more or less thickly, according to the length of
+time they are allowed to remain. This, however, is merely an
+encrustation, not extending into the objects. In a similar way the
+precipitation of solid material from waters of this description forms
+the porous rock known as tufa, and this often encloses moss, twigs, and
+other substances that are in no way to be classed with fossils.
+
+But some streams, flowing over limestone rocks, take up considerable
+carbonate of lime, and this may be deposited in water-soaked logs,
+replacing more or less of the woody tissue and thus really partially
+changing the wood into stone.
+
+The very rocks themselves may consist largely of fossils; chalk, for
+example, is mainly made up of the disintegrated shells of simple marine
+animals called foraminifers, and the beautiful flint-like "skeletons" of
+other small creatures termed radiolarians, minute as they are, have
+contributed extensively to the formation of some strata.
+
+Even after an object has become fossilized, it is far from certain that
+it will remain in good condition until found, while the chance of its
+being found at all is exceedingly small. When we remember that it is
+only here and there that nature has made the contents of the rocks
+accessible by turning the strata on edge, heaving them into cliffs or
+furrowing them with valleys and canyons, we realize what a vast number
+of pages of the fossil record must remain not only unread, but unseen.
+The wonder is, not that we know so little of the history of the past,
+but that we have learned so much, for not only is nature careless in
+keeping the records--preserving them mostly in scattered fragments--but
+after they have been laid away and sealed up in the rocks they are
+subject to many accidents. Some specimens get badly flattened by the
+weight of subsequently deposited strata, others are cracked and twisted
+by the movements of the rocks during periods of upheaval or subsidence,
+and when at last they are brought to the surface, the same sun and rain,
+snow and frost, from which they once escaped, are ready to renew the
+attack and crumble even the hard stone to fragments. Such, very briefly,
+are some of the methods by which fossils may be formed, such are some of
+the accidents by which they may be destroyed; but this description must
+be taken as a mere outline and as applying mainly to vertebrates, or
+backboned animals, since it is with them that we shall have to deal. It
+may, however, show why it is that fossils are not more plentiful, why we
+have mere hints of the existence of many animals, and why myriads of
+creatures may have flourished and passed away without so much as leaving
+a trace of their presence behind.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_A very valuable and interesting article by Dr. Charles A. White,
+entitled "The Relation of Biology to Geological Investigation," will be
+found in the Report of the United States National Museum for 1892. This
+comprises a series of essays on the nature and scientific uses of fossil
+remains, their origin, relative chronological value and other questions
+pertaining to them. The United States National Museum has published a
+pamphlet, part K, Bulletin 39, containing directions for collecting and
+preparing fossils, by Charles Schuchert; and another, part B, Bulletin
+39, collecting recent and fossil plants, by F. H. Knowlton._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Skeleton of a Radiolarian Very Greatly
+Enlarged.]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATES
+
+    "_We are the ancients of the earth
+    And in the morning of the times._"
+
+
+There is a universal, and perfectly natural, desire for information,
+which in ourselves we term thirst for knowledge and in others call
+curiosity, that makes mankind desire to know how everything began and
+causes much speculation as to how it all will end. This may take the
+form of a wish to know how a millionaire made his first ten cents, or it
+may lead to the questions--What is the oldest animal? or, What is the
+first known member of the great group of backboned animals at whose head
+man has placed himself? and, What did this, our primeval and
+many-times-removed ancestor, look like? The question is one that has
+ever been full of interest for naturalists, and Nature has been
+interrogated in various ways in the hope that she might be persuaded to
+yield a satisfactory answer. The most direct way has been that of
+tracing back the history of animal life by means of fossil remains, but
+beyond a certain point this method cannot go, since, for reasons stated
+in various places in these pages, the soft bodies of primitive animals
+are not preserved. To supplement this work, the embryologist has studied
+the early stages of animals, as their development throws a side-light on
+their past history. And, finally, there is the study of the varied forms
+of invertebrates, some of which have proved to be like vertebrates in
+part of their structure, while others have been revealed as vertebrates
+in disguise. So far these various methods have yielded various answers,
+or the replies, like those of the Delphic Oracle, have been variously
+interpreted so that vertebrates are considered by some to have descended
+from the worms, while others have found their beginnings in some animal
+allied to the King Crab.
+
+Every student of genealogy knows only too well how difficult a matter it
+is to trace a family pedigree back a few centuries, how soon the family
+names become changed, the line of descent obscure, and how soon gaps
+appear whose filling in requires much patient research. How much more
+difficult must it be, then, to trace the pedigree of a race that
+extends, not over centuries, but thousands of centuries; how wide must
+be some of the gaps, how very different may the founders of the family
+be from their descendants! The words old and ancient that we use so
+often in speaking of fossils appeal to us somewhat vaguely, for we speak
+of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, and call a family old
+that can show a pedigree running back four or five hundred years, when
+such as these are but affairs of yesterday compared with even recent
+fossils.
+
+Perhaps we may better appreciate the meaning of these words by recalling
+that, since the dawn of vertebrate life, sufficient of the earth's
+surface has been worn away and washed into the sea to form, were the
+strata piled directly one upon the other, fifteen or twenty miles of
+rock. This, of course, is the sum total of sedimentary rocks, for such a
+thickness as this is not to be found at any one locality; because,
+during the various ups and downs that this world of ours has met with,
+those portions that chanced to be out of water would receive no deposit
+of mud or sand, and hence bear no corresponding stratum of rock. The
+reader may think that there is a great deal of difference between
+fifteen and twenty miles, but this liberal margin is due to the
+difficulty of measuring the thickness of the rocks, and in Europe the
+sum of the measurable strata is much greater than in North America.
+
+The earliest traces of animal life are found deeper still, beneath
+something like eighteen to twenty-five miles of rock, while below this
+level are the strata in which dwelt the earliest living things,
+organisms so small and simple that no trace of their existence has been
+left, and we infer that they were there because any given group starts
+in a modest way with small and simple individuals.
+
+At the bottom, then, of twenty miles of rocks the seeker for the
+progenitor of the great family of backboned animals finds the scant
+remains of fish-like animals that the cautious naturalist, who is much
+given to "hedging," terms, not vertebrates, but prevertebrates or the
+forerunners of backboned animals. The earliest of these consist of small
+bony plates, and traces of a cartilaginous backbone from the Lower
+Silurian of Colorado, believed to represent relatives of Chim�ra and
+species related to those better-known forms Holoptychius and Osteolepis,
+which occur in higher strata. There are certainly indications of
+vertebrate life, but the remains are so imperfect that little more can
+be said regarding them, and this is also true of the small conical teeth
+which occur in the Lower Silurian of St. Petersburg, and are thought to
+be the teeth of some animal like the lamprey.
+
+A little higher up in the rocks, though not in the scale of life, in the
+Lower Old Red Sandstone of England, are found more numerous and better
+preserved specimens of another little fish-like creature, rarely if ever
+exceeding two inches in length, and also related (probably) to the
+hag-fishes and lampreys that live to-day.
+
+These early vertebrates are not only small, but they were cartilaginous,
+so that it was essential for their preservation that they should be
+buried in soft mud as soon as possible after death. Even if this took
+place they were later on submitted to the pressure of some miles of
+overlying rock until, in some cases, their remains have been pressed out
+thinner than a sheet of paper, and so thoroughly incorporated into the
+surrounding stone that it is no easy matter to trace their shadowy
+outlines. With such drawbacks as these to contend with, it can scarcely
+be wondered at that, while some naturalists believe these little
+creatures to be related to the lamprey, others consider that they belong
+to a perfectly distinct group of animals, and others still think it
+possible that they may be the larval or early stages of larger and
+better-developed forms.
+
+Still higher up we come upon the abundant remains of numerous small
+fish-like animals, more or less completely clad in bony armor,
+indicating that they lived in troublous times when there was literally a
+fight for existence and only such as were well armed or well protected
+could hope to survive. A parallel case exists to-day in some of the
+rivers of South America, where the little cat-fishes would possibly be
+eaten out of existence but for the fact that they are covered--some of
+them very completely--with plate-armor that enables them to defy their
+enemies, or renders them such poor eating as not to be worth the taking.
+The arrangement of the plates or scales in the living Loricaria is very
+suggestive of the series of bony rings covering the body of the ancient
+Cephalaspis, only the latter, so far as we know, had no side-fins; but
+the creatures are in no wise related, and the similarity is in
+appearance only.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Cephalaspis and Loricaria, an Ancient and a
+Modern Armored Fish.]
+
+Pterichthys, the wing fish, was another small, quaint, armor-clad
+creature, whose fossilized remains were taken for those of a crab, and
+once described as belonging to a beetle. Certainly the buckler of this
+fish, which is the part most often preserved, with its jointed, bony
+arms, looks to the untrained eye far more like some strange crustacean
+than a fish, and even naturalists have pictured the animal as crawling
+over the bare sands by means of those same arms. These fishes and their
+allies were once the dominant type of life, and must have abounded in
+favored localities, for in places are great deposits of their protective
+shields jumbled together in a confused mass, and, save that they have
+hardened into stone, lying just as they were washed up on the ancient
+beach ages ago. How abundant they were may be gathered from the fact
+that it is believed their bodies helped consolidate portions of the
+strata of the English Old Red Sandstone. Says Mr. Hutchinson, speaking
+of the Caithness Flagstones, "They owe their peculiar tenacity and
+durability to the dead fishes that rotted in their midst while yet they
+were only soft mud. For just as a plaster cast boiled in oil becomes
+thereby denser and more durable, so the oily and other matter coming
+from decomposing fish operated on the surrounding sand or mud so as to
+make it more compact."
+
+It may not be easy to explain how it came to pass that fishes dwelling
+in salt water, as these undoubtedly did, were thus deposited in great
+numbers, but we may now and then see how deposits of fresh-water fishes
+may have been formed. When rivers flowing through a stretch of level
+country are swollen during the spring floods, they overflow their banks,
+often carrying along large numbers of fishes. As the water subsides
+these may be caught in shallow pools that soon dry up, leaving the
+fishes to perish, and every year the Illinois game association rescues
+from the "back waters" quantities of bass that would otherwise be lost.
+Mr. F. S. Webster has recorded an instance that came under his
+observation in Texas, where thousands of gar pikes, trapped in a lake
+formed by an overflow of the Rio Grande, had been, by the drying up of
+this lake, penned into a pool about seventy-five feet long by
+twenty-five feet wide. The fish were literally packed together like
+sardines, layer upon layer, and a shot fired into the pool would set the
+entire mass in motion, the larger gars as they dashed about casting the
+smaller fry into the air, a score at a time. Mr. Webster estimates that
+there must have been not less than 700 or 800 fish in the pool, from a
+foot and a half up to seven feet in length, every one of which perished
+a little later. In addition to the fish in the pond, hundreds of those
+that had died previously lay about in every direction, and one can
+readily imagine what a fish-bed this would have made had the occurrence
+taken place in the past.
+
+From the better-preserved specimens that do now and then turn up, we are
+able to obtain a very exact idea of the construction of the bony cuirass
+by which Pterichthys and its American cousin were protected, and to make
+a pretty accurate reconstruction of the entire animal. These primitive
+fishes had mouths, for eating is a necessity; but these mouths were not
+associated with true jaws, for the two do not, as might be supposed,
+necessarily go together. Neither did these animals possess hard
+backbones, and, while Pterichthys and its relatives had arms or fins,
+the hard parts of these were not on the inside but on the outside, so
+that the limb was more like the leg of a crab than the fin of a fish;
+and this is among the reasons why some naturalists have been led to
+conclude that vertebrates may have developed from crustaceans.
+Pteraspis, another of these little armored prevertebrates, had a less
+complicated covering, and looked very much like a small fish with its
+fore parts caught in an elongate clam-shell.
+
+The fishes that we have so far been considering--orphans of the past
+they might be termed, as they have no living relatives--were little
+fellows; but their immediate successors, preserved in the Devonian
+strata, particularly of North America, were the giants of those days,
+termed, from their size and presumably fierce appearance, Titantichthys
+and Dinichthys, and are related to a fish, _Ceratodus_, still living in
+Australia.
+
+We know practically nothing of the external appearance of these fishes,
+great and fierce though they may have been, with powerful jaws and
+armored heads, for they had no bony skeleton--as if they devoted their
+energies to preying upon their neighbors rather than to internal
+improvements. They attained a length of ten to eighteen feet, with a
+gape, in the large species called Titanichthys, of four feet, and such a
+fish might well be capable of devouring anything known to have lived at
+that early date.
+
+Succeeding these, in Carboniferous times, came a host of shark-like
+creatures known mainly from their teeth and spines, for their skeletons
+were of cartilage, and belonging to types that have mostly perished,
+giving place to others better adapted to the changed conditions wrought
+by time. Almost the only living relative of these early fishes is a
+little shark, known as the Port Jackson Shark, living in Australian
+waters. Like the old sharks, this one has a spine in front of his back
+fins, and, like them, he fortunately has a mouthful of diversely shaped
+teeth; fortunately, because through their aid we are enabled to form
+some idea of the manner in which some of the teeth found scattered
+through the rocks were arranged. For the teeth were not planted in
+sockets, as they are in higher animals, but simply rested on the jaws,
+from which they readily became detached when decomposition set in after
+death. To complicate matters, the teeth in different parts of the jaws
+were often so unlike one another that when found separately they would
+hardly be suspected of having belonged to the same animal. Besides teeth
+these fishes, for purposes of offence and defence, were usually armed
+with spines, sometimes of considerable size and strength, and often
+elaborately grooved and sculptured. As the soft parts perished the teeth
+and spines were left to be scattered by waves and currents, a tooth
+here, another there, and a spine somewhere else; so it has often
+happened that, being found separately, two or three quite different
+names have been given to one and the same animal. Now and then some
+specimen comes to light that escaped the thousand and one accidents to
+which such things were exposed, and that not only shows the teeth and
+spines but the faint imprint of the body and fins as well. And from such
+rare examples we learn just what teeth and spines go with one another,
+and sometimes find that one fish has received names enough for an entire
+school.
+
+These ancient sharks were not the large and powerful fishes that we have
+to-day--these came upon the scene later--but mostly fishes of small
+size, and, as indicated by their spines, fitted quite as much for
+defence as offence. Their rise was rapid, and in their turn they became
+the masters of the world, spreading in great numbers through the waters
+that covered the face of the earth; but their supremacy was of short
+duration, for they declined in numbers even during the Carboniferous
+Period, and later dwindled almost to extinction. And while sharks again
+increased, they never reached their former abundance, and the species
+that arose were swift, predatory forms, better fitted for the struggle
+for existence.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The early fishes make but little show in a museum, both on account of
+their small size and the conditions under which they have been
+preserved. The Museum of Comparative Zo�logy has a large collection of
+these ancient vertebrates, and there is a considerable number of fine
+teeth and spines of Carboniferous sharks in the United States National
+Museum._
+
+_Hugh Miller's "The Old Red Sandstone" contains some charming
+descriptions of his discoveries of Pterichthys and related forms, and
+this book will ever remain a classic._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Pterichthys, the Wing Fish.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST
+
+    "_The weird palimpsest, old and vast,
+    Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past._"
+
+
+The Rev. H. N. Hutchinson commences one of his interesting books with
+Emerson's saying, "that Everything in nature is engaged in writing its
+own history;" and, as this remark cannot be improved on, it may well
+stand at the head of a chapter dealing with the footprints that the
+creatures of yore left on the sands of the sea-shore, the mud of a
+long-vanished lake bottom, or the shrunken bed of some water-course. Not
+only have creatures that walked left a record of their progress, but the
+worms that burrowed in the sand, the shell-fish that trailed over the
+mud when the tide was low, the stranded crab as he scuttled back to the
+sea--each and all left some mark to tell of their former presence. Even
+the rain that fell and the very wind that blew sometimes recorded the
+direction whence they came, and we may read in the rocks, also, accounts
+of freshets sweeping down with turbid waters, and of long periods of
+drouth, when the land was parched and lakes and rivers shrank beneath
+the burning sun.
+
+All these things have been told and retold; but, as there are many who
+have not read Mr. Hutchinson's books and to whom Buckland is quite
+unknown, it may be excusable to add something to what has already been
+said in the first chapter of these impressions of the past.
+
+The very earliest suggestion we have of the presence of animal life upon
+this globe is in the form of certain long dark streaks below the
+Cambrian of England, considered to be traces of the burrows of worms
+that were filled with fine mud, and while this interpretation may be
+wrong there is, on the other hand, no reason why it may not be correct.
+Plant and animal life must have had very lowly beginnings, and it is not
+at all probable that we shall find any trace of the simple and minute
+forms with which they started,[2] though we should not be surprised at
+finding hints of the presence of living creatures below the strata in
+which their remains are actually known to occur.
+
+[2] _Within the last few years what are believed to be indications of
+bacteria have been described from carboniferous rocks. Naturally such
+announcements must be accepted with great caution, for while there is no
+reason why this may not be true, it is much more probable that definite
+evidence of the effects of bacteria on plants should be found than that
+these simple, single-celled organisms should themselves have been
+detected._
+
+Worm burrows, to be sure, are hardly footprints, but tracks are found in
+Cambrian rocks just above the strata in which the supposed burrows
+occur, and from that time onward there are tracks a-plenty, for they
+have been made, wherever the conditions were favorable, ever since
+animals began to walk. All that was needed was a medium in which
+impressions could be made and so filled that there was imperfect
+adhesion between mould and matrix. Thus we find them formed not only by
+the sea-shore, in sands alternately dry and covered, but by the
+river-side, in shallow water, or even on land where tracks might be left
+in soft or moist earth into which wind-driven dust or sand might lodge,
+or sand or mud be swept by the mimic flood caused by a thunder shower.
+
+So there are tracks in strata of every age; at first those of
+invertebrates: after the worm burrows the curious complicated trails of
+animals believed to be akin to the king crab; broad, ribbed, ribbon-like
+paths ascribed to trilobites; then faint scratches of insects, and the
+shallow, palmed prints of salamanders, and the occasional slender sprawl
+of a lizard; then footprints, big and little, of the horde of Dinosaurs
+and, finally, miles above the Cambrian, marks of mammals. Sometimes,
+like the tracks of salamanders and reptiles in the carboniferous rocks
+of Pennsylvania and Kansas, these are all we have to tell of the
+existence of air-breathing animals. Again, as with the iguanodon, the
+foot to fit the track may be found in the same layer of rock, but this
+is not often the case.
+
+Although footprints in the rocks must often have been seen, they seem to
+have attracted little or no notice from scientific men until about 1830
+to 1835, when they were almost simultaneously described both in Europe
+and America; even then, it was some time before they were generally
+conceded to be actually the tracks of animals, but, like worm burrows
+and trails, were looked upon as the impressions of sea-weeds.
+
+The now famous tracks in the "brown stone" of the Connecticut Valley
+seem to have first been seen by Pliny Moody in 1802, when he ploughed up
+a specimen on his farm, showing small imprints, which later on were
+popularly called the tracks of Noah's raven. The discovery passed
+without remark until in 1835 the footprints came under the observation
+of Dr. James Deane, who, in turn, called Professor Hitchcock's attention
+to them. The latter at once began a systematic study of these
+impressions, publishing his first account in 1836 and continuing his
+researches for many years, in the course of which he brought together
+the fine collection in Amherst College. At that time Dinosaurs were
+practically unknown, and it is not to be wondered at that these
+three-toed tracks, great and small, were almost universally believed to
+be those of birds. So it is greatly to the credit of Dr. Deane, who also
+studied these footprints, that he was led to suspect that they might
+have been made by other animals. This suspicion was partly caused by the
+occasional association of four and five-toed prints with the three-toed
+impressions, and partly by the rare occurrence of imprints showing the
+texture of the sole of the foot, which was quite different from that of
+any known bird.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Where a Dinosaur Sat Down.]
+
+In the light of our present knowledge we are able to read many things in
+these tracks that were formerly more or less obscure, and to see in them
+a complete verification of Dr. Deane's suspicion that they were not made
+by birds. We see clearly that the long tracks called _Anomoepus_,
+with their accompanying short fore feet, mark where some Dinosaur
+squatted down to rest or progressed slowly on all-fours, as does the
+kangaroo when feeding quietly;[3] and we interpret the curious
+heart-shaped depression sometimes seen back of the feet, not as the mark
+of a stubby tail, but as made by the ends of the slender pubes, bones
+that help form the hip-joints. Then, too, the mark of the inner, or
+short first, toe, is often very evident, although it was a long time
+before the bones of this toe were actually found, and many of the
+Dinosaurs now known to have four toes were supposed to have but three.
+
+[3] _It is to be noted that a leaping kangaroo touches the ground
+neither with his heel nor his tail, but that between jumps he rests
+momentarily on his toes only; hence impressions made by any creature
+that jumped like a kangaroo would be very short._
+
+It seems strange, and it is strange, that while so many hundreds of
+tracks should have been found in the limited area exposed to view, so
+few bones have been found--our knowledge of the veritable animals that
+made the tracks being a blank. A few examples have, it is true, been
+found, but these are only a tithe of those known to have existed; while
+of the great animals that strode along the shore, leaving tracks fifteen
+inches long and a yard apart pressed deeply into the hard sand, not a
+bone remains. The probability is that the strata containing their bones
+lie out to sea, whither their bodies were carried by tides and currents,
+and that we may never see more than the few fragments that were
+scattered along the seaside.
+
+That part of the Valley of the Connecticut wherein the footprints are
+found seems to have been a long, narrow estuary running southward from
+Turner's Falls, Mass., where the tracks are most abundant and most
+clear. The topography was such that this estuary was subject to sudden
+and great fluctuations of the water-level, large tracts of shore being
+now left dry to bake in the sun, and again covered by turbid water which
+deposited on the bottom a layer of mud. Over and over again this
+happened, forming layer upon layer of what is now stone, sometimes the
+lapse of time between the deposits being so short that the tracks of
+the big Dinosaurs extend through several sheets of stone; while again
+there was a period of drouth when the shore became so dry and firm as to
+retain but a single shallow impression.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Footprints of Dinosaurs on the Brownstone of the
+Connecticut Valley. _From a slab in the museum of Amherst College._]
+
+Something of the wealth of animal life that roamed about this estuary
+may be gathered from the number of different footprints recorded on the
+sands, and these are so many and so varied that Professor Hitchcock in
+two extensive reports enumerated over 150 species, representing various
+groups of animals. One little point must, however, be borne in mind,
+that mere size is no sure indication of differences in dealing with
+reptiles, for these long-lived creatures grow almost continuously
+throughout life, so that one animal even may have left his footprints
+over and over in assorted sizes from one end of the valley to the other.
+
+The slab shown in Fig. 7 is a remarkably fine example of these
+Connecticut River footprints; it shows in relief forty-eight tracks of
+the animal called Brontozoum sillimanium and six of a lesser species.
+It was quarried near Middletown, in 1778, and for sixty years did duty
+as a flagstone, fortunately with the face downwards. When taken up for
+repairs the tracks were discovered, and later on the slab, which
+measures three by five feet, was transferred to the museum of Amherst
+College.
+
+There is an interesting parallel between the history of footprints in
+England and America, for they were noticed at about the same time, 1830,
+in both countries; in each case the tracks were in rocks of Triassic
+age, and, in both instances, the animals that made them have never been
+found. In England, however, the tracks first found were those ascribed
+to tortoises, though a little later Dinosaur footprints were discovered
+in the same locality. Oddly enough these numerous tracks all run one
+way, from west to east, as if the animals were migrating, or were
+pursuing some well-known and customary route to their feeding grounds.
+
+For some reason Triassic rocks are particularly rich in footprints; for
+from strata of this same age in the Rhine Valley come those curious
+examples so like the mark of a stubby hand that Dr. Kaup christened the
+beast supposed to have made them _Cheirotherium_, beast with a hand,
+suggesting that they had been made by some gigantic opossum. As the
+tracks measure five by eight inches, it would have been rather a large
+specimen, but the mammals had not then arisen, and it is generally
+believed that the impressions were made by huge (for their kind)
+salamander-like creatures, known as labyrinthodonts, whose remains are
+found in the same strata.
+
+Footprints may aid greatly in determining the attitude assumed by
+extinct animals, and in this way they have been of great service in
+furnishing proof that many of the Dinosaurs walked erect. The
+impressions on the sands of the old Connecticut estuary may be said to
+show this very plainly, but in England and Belgium is evidence still
+more conclusive, in the shape of tracks ascribed to the Iguanodon. These
+were made on soft soil into which the feet sank much more deeply than in
+the Connecticut sands, and the casts made in the natural moulds show the
+impression of toes very clearly. If the animals had walked flat-footed,
+as we do, the prints of the toes would have been followed by a long heel
+mark, but such is not the case; there are the sharply defined marks of
+the toes and nothing more, showing plainly that the Iguanodons walked,
+like birds, on the toes alone. More than this, had these Dinosaurs
+dragged their tails there would have been a continuous furrow between
+the footprints; but nothing of this sort is to be found; on the
+contrary, a fine series of tracks, uncovered at Hastings, England, made
+by several individuals and running for seventy-five feet, shows
+footprints only. Hence it may be fairly concluded that these great
+creatures carried their tails clear of the ground, as shown in the
+picture of _Thespesius_, the weight of the tail counterbalancing that of
+the body. Where crocodilians or some of the short-limbed Dinosaurs have
+crept along there is, as we should expect, a continuous furrow between
+the imprints of the feet. This is what footprints tell us when their
+message is read aright; when improperly translated they only add to the
+enormous bulk of our ignorance.
+
+Some years ago we were treated to accounts of wonderful footprints in
+the rock of the prison-yard at Carson City, Nev., which, according to
+the papers, not only showed that men existed at a much earlier period
+than the scientific supposed, but that they were men of giant stature.
+This was clearly demonstrated by the footprints, for they were such as
+_might_ have been made by huge moccasined feet, and this was all that
+was necessary for the conclusion that they _were_ made by just such
+feet. For it is a curious fact that the majority of mankind seem to
+prefer any explanation other than the most simple and natural,
+particularly in the case of fossils, and are always looking for a
+primitive race of gigantic men.
+
+Bones of the Mastodon and Mammoth have again and again been eagerly
+accepted as those of giants; a salamander was brought forward as
+evidence of the deluge (_homo diluvii testis_); ammonites and their
+allies pose as fossil snakes, and the "petrified man" flourishes
+perennially. However, in this case the prints were recognized by
+naturalists as having most probably been made by some great ground
+sloth, such as the Mylodon or Morotherium, these animals, though
+belonging to a group whose headquarters were in Patagonia, having
+extended their range as far north as Oregon. That the tracks seemed to
+have been made by a biped, rather than a quadruped, was due to the fact
+that the prints of the hind feet fell upon and obliterated the marks of
+the fore. Still, a little observation showed that here and there prints
+of the fore feet were to be seen, and on one spot were indications of a
+struggle between two of the big beasts. The mud, or rather the stone
+that had been mud, bears the imprints of opposing feet, one set deeper
+at the toes, the other at the heels, as if one animal had pushed and the
+other resisted. In the rock, too, are broad depressions bearing the
+marks of coarse hair, where one creature had apparently sat on its
+haunches in order to use its fore limbs to the best advantage. Other
+footprints there are in this prison-yard; the great round "spoor" of the
+mammoth, the hoofs of a deer, and the paws of a wolf(?), indicating that
+hereabout was some pool where all these creatures came to drink. More
+than this, we learn that when these prints were made, or shortly after,
+a strong wind blew from the southeast, for on that face of the ridges
+bounding the margin of each big footprint, we find sand that lodged
+against the squeezed-up mud and stuck there to serve as a perpetual
+record of the direction of the wind.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_Almost every museum has some specimen of the Connecticut Valley
+footprints, but the largest and finest collections are in the museums of
+Amherst College, Mass., and Yale University, although, owing to lack of
+room, only a few of the Yale specimens are on exhibition. The collection
+at Amherst comprises most of the types described by Professor E.
+Hitchcock in his "Ichnology of New England," a work in two fully
+illustrated quarto volumes. Other footprints are described and figured
+by Dr. J. Deane in "Ichnographs from the Sandstone of the Connecticut
+River."_
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.--The Track of a Three-toed Dinosaur.]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS
+
+     "_A time there was when the universe was darkness and water,
+     wherein certain animals of frightful and compound mien were
+     generated. There were serpents, and other creatures with the
+     mixed shapes of one another...._"--_The Archaic Genesis._
+
+
+History shows us how in the past nation after nation has arisen,
+increased in size and strength, extended its bounds and dominion until
+it became the ruling power of the world, and then passed out of
+existence, often so completely that nothing has remained save a few
+mounds of dirt marking the graves of former cities. And so has it been
+with the kingdoms of nature. Just as Greece, Carthage, and Rome were
+successively the rulers of the sea in the days that we call old, so,
+long before the advent of man, the seas were ruled by successive races
+of creatures whose bones now lie scattered over the beds of the ancient
+seas, even as the wrecks of galleys lie strewn over the bed of the
+Mediterranean. For a time the armor-clad fishes held undisputed sway;
+then their reign was ended by the coming of the sharks, who in their
+turn gave way to the fish-lizards, the Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs.
+These, however, were rather local in their rule; but the next group of
+reptiles to appear on the scene, the great marine reptiles called
+Mosasaurs, practically extended their empire around the world, from New
+Zealand to North America.
+
+We properly call these reptiles great, for so they were; but there are
+degrees of greatness, and there is a universal tendency to think of the
+animals that have become extinct as much greater than those of the
+present day, to magnify the reptile that we never saw as well as the
+fish that "got away," and it may be safely said that the greatest of
+animals will shrink before a two-foot rule. As a matter of fact, no
+animals are known to have existed that were larger than the whales; and,
+while there are now no reptiles that can compare in bulk with the
+Dinosaurs, there were few Mosasaurs that exceeded in size a first-class
+Crocodile. An occasional Mosasaur reaches a length of forty feet, but
+such are rare indeed, and one even twenty-five feet long is a large
+specimen,[4] while the great Mugger, or Man-eating Crocodile, grows, if
+permitted, to a length of twenty-five or even thirty feet, and need not
+be ashamed to match his bulk and jaws against those of most Mosasaurs.
+
+[4] _It is surprising to find Professor Cope placing the length of the
+Mosasaurs at 70, 80, or 100 feet, as there is not the slightest basis
+for even the lowest of these figures. Professor Williston, the best
+authority on the subject, states, in his volume on the "Cretaceous
+Reptiles of Kansas," that there is not in existence any specimen of a
+Mosasaur indicating a greater length than 45 feet._
+
+The first of these sea-reptiles to be discovered has passed into
+history, and now reposes in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, after
+changing hands two or three times, the original owner being dispossessed
+of his treasure by the subtleties of law, while the next holder was
+deprived of the specimen by main force. Thus the story is told by M.
+Faujas St. Fond, as rendered into English, in Mantell's "Petrifactions
+and their Teachings": "Some workmen, in blasting the rock in one of the
+caverns of the interior of the mountain, perceived, to their
+astonishment, the jaws of a large animal attached to the roof of the
+chasm. The discovery was immediately made known to M. Hoffman, who
+repaired to the spot, and for weeks presided over the arduous task of
+separating the mass of stone containing these remains from the
+surrounding rock. His labors were rewarded by the successful extrication
+of the specimen, which he conveyed in triumph to his house. This
+extraordinary discovery, however, soon became the subject of general
+conversation, and excited so much interest that the canon of the
+cathedral which stands on the mountain resolved to claim the fossil, in
+right of being lord of the manor, and succeeded, after a long and
+harassing lawsuit, in obtaining the precious relic. It remained for
+years in his possession, and Hoffman died without regaining his
+treasure. At length the French Revolution broke out, and the armies of
+the Republic advanced to the gates of Maestricht. The town was
+bombarded; but, at the suggestion of the committee of savans who
+accompanied the French troops to select their share of the plunder, the
+artillery was not suffered to play on that part of the city in which the
+celebrated fossil was known to be preserved. In the meantime, the canon
+of St. Peter's, shrewdly suspecting the reason why such peculiar favor
+was shown to his residence, removed the specimen and concealed it in a
+vault; but, when the city was taken, the French authorities compelled
+him to give up his ill-gotten prize, which was immediately transmitted
+to the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, where it still forms one of the
+most interesting objects in that magnificent collection." And there it
+remains to this day.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--A Great Sea Lizard, _Tylosaurus Dyspelor_. _From
+a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+The seas that rolled over western Kansas were the headquarters of the
+Mosasaurs, and hundreds--aye, thousands--of specimens have been taken
+from the chalk bluffs of that region, some of them in such a fine state
+of preservation that we are not only well acquainted with their internal
+structure, but with their outward appearance as well. They were
+essentially swimming lizards--great, overgrown, and distant relatives of
+the Monitors of Africa and Asia, especially adapted to a roving,
+predatory life by their powerful tails and paddle-shaped feet. Their
+cup-and-ball vertebr� indicate great flexibility of the body, their
+sharp teeth denote ability to capture slippery prey, and the structure
+of the lower jaw shows that they probably ate in a hurry and swallowed
+their food entire, or bolted it in great chunks. The jaws of all
+reptiles are made up of a number of pieces, but these are usually so
+spliced together that each half of the jaw is one inflexible, or nearly
+inflexible, mass of bone. In snakes, which swallow their prey entire,
+the difficulty of swallowing animals greater in diameter than themselves
+is surmounted by having the two halves of the lower jaw loosely joined
+at the free ends, so that these may spread wide apart and thus increase
+the gape of the mouth. This is also helped by the manner in which the
+jaw is joined to the head. The pelican solves the problem by the length
+of his mandibles, this allowing so much spring that when open they bow
+apart to form a nice little landing net. In the Mosasaurs, as in the
+cormorants, among birds, there is a sort of joint in each half of the
+lower jaw which permits it to bow outward when opened, and this, aided
+by the articulation of the jaw with the cranium, adds greatly to the
+swallowing capacity. Thus in nature the same end is attained by very
+different methods. To borrow a suggestion from Professor Cope, if the
+reader will extend his arms at full length, the palms touching, and then
+bend his elbows outward he will get a very good idea of the action of a
+Mosasaur's jaw. The western sea was a lively place in the day of the
+great Mosasaurs, for with them swam the king of turtles, Archelon, as
+Mr. Wieland has fitly named him, a creature a dozen feet or more in
+length, with a head a full yard long, while in the shallows prowled
+great fishes with massive jaws and teeth like spikes.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Jaw of a Mosasaur, Showing the Joint that
+Increased the Swallowing Capacity of that Reptile.]
+
+There, too, was the great, toothed diver, Hesperornis (see page 83),
+while over the waters flew pterodactyls, with a spread of wing of twenty
+feet, largest of all flying creatures; and, not improbably--nay, very
+probably--fish-eaters, too; and when each and all of these were seeking
+their dinners, there were troublous times for the small fry in that old
+Kansan sea.
+
+And then there came a change; to the south, to the west, to the north,
+the land was imperceptibly but surely rising, perhaps only an inch or
+two in a century, but still rising, until "The Ocean in which flourished
+this abundant and vigorous life was at last completely inclosed on the
+west by elevations of sea-bottom, so that it only communicated with the
+Atlantic and Pacific at the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Sea."
+
+The continued elevation of both eastern and western shores contracted
+its area, and when ridges of the sea-bottom reached the surface, forming
+long, low bars, parts of the water-area were included, and connection
+with salt-water prevented. Thus were the living beings imprisoned and
+subjected to many new risks to life. The stronger could more readily
+capture the weaker, while the fishes would gradually perish through the
+constant freshening of the water. With the death of any considerable
+class, the balance of food-supply would be lost, and many large species
+would disappear from the scene. The most omnivorous and enduring would
+longest resist the approach of starvation, but would finally yield to
+inexorable fate--the last one caught by the shifting bottom among
+shallow pools, from which his exhausted energies could not extricate
+him.[5]
+
+[5] _Cope: "The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West," p.
+50, being the "Report of the United States Geological Survey of the
+Territories," Vol. II._
+
+Like the "Fossil man" the sea-serpent flourishes perennially in the
+newspapers and, despite the fact that he is now mainly regarded as a
+joke, there have been many attempts to habilitate this mythical monster
+and place him on a foundation of firm fact. The most earnest of these
+was that of M. Oudemans, who expressed his belief in the existence of
+some rare and huge seal-like creature whose occasional appearance in
+southern waters gave rise to the best authenticated reports of the
+sea-serpent. Among other possibilities it has been suggested that some
+animal believed to be extinct had really lived over to the present day.
+Now there are a few waifs, spared from the wrecks of ancient faunas,
+stranded on the shores of the present, such as the Australian Ceratodus
+and the Gar Pikes of North America, and these and all other creatures
+that could be mustered in were used as proofs to sustain this theory.
+If, it was said, these animals have been spared, why not others? If a
+fish of such ancient lineage as the Gar Pike is so common as to be a
+nuisance, why may there not be a few Plesiosaurs or a Mosasaur somewhere
+in the depths of the ocean? The argument was a good one, the more that
+we may "suppose" almost anything, but it must be said that no trace of
+any of these creatures has so far been found outside of the strata in
+which they have long been known to occur, and all the probabilities are
+opposed to this theory. Still, if some of these creatures _had_ been
+spared, they might well have passed for sea-serpents, even though
+Zeuglodon, the one most like a serpent in form, was the one most
+remotely related to snakes.
+
+Zeuglodon, the yoke-tooth, so named from the shape of its great cutting
+teeth, was indeed a strange animal, and if we wonder at the Greenland
+Whale, whose head is one-third its total length, we may equally wonder
+at Zeuglodon, with four feet of head, ten feet of body, and forty feet
+of tail. No one, seeing the bones of the trunk and tail for the first
+time, would suspect that they belonged to the same animal, for while the
+vertebr� of the body are of moderate size, those of the tail are, for
+the bulk of creature, the longest known, measuring from fifteen to
+eighteen inches in length, and weighing in a fossil condition fifty to
+sixty pounds. In life, the animal was from fifty to seventy feet in
+length, and not more than six or eight feet through the deepest part of
+the body, while the tail was much less; the head was small and pointed,
+the jaws well armed with grasping and cutting teeth, and just back of
+the head was a pair of short paddles, not unlike those of a fur seal. It
+is curious to speculate on the habits of a creature in which the tail
+so obviously wagged the dog and whose articulations all point to great
+freedom of movement up and down. This may mean that it was an active
+diver, descending to great depths to prey upon squid, as the Sperm-Whale
+does to-day, while it seems quite certain that it must have reared at
+least a third of its great length out of water to take a comprehensive
+view of its surroundings. And if size is any indication of power, the
+great tail, which obviously ended in flukes like those of a whale, must
+have been capable of propelling the beast at a speed of twenty or thirty
+miles an hour. Something of the kind must have been needed in order that
+the small head might provide food enough for the great tail, and it has
+been suggested that inability to do this was the reason why Zeuglodon
+became extinct. On the other hand, it has been ingeniously argued that
+the huge tail served to store up fat when food was plenty, which was
+drawn upon when food became scarce. The fur seals do something similar
+to this, for the males come on shore in May rolling in blubber, and
+depart in September lean and hungry after a three months' fast.
+
+Zeuglodons must have been very numerous in the old Gulf of Mexico, for
+bones are found abundantly through portions of our Southern States; it
+was also an inhabitant of the old seas of southern Europe, but, as we
+shall see, it gave place to the great fossil shark, and this in turn
+passed out of existence. Still, common though its bones may be, stories
+of their use for making stone walls--and these stories are still in
+circulation--resolve themselves on close scrutiny into the occasional
+use of a big vertebra to support the corner of a corn-crib.
+
+The scientific name of Zeuglodon is _Basilosaurus cetoides_, the
+whale-like king lizard--the first of these names, _Basilosaurus_, having
+been given to it by the original describer, Dr. Harlan, who supposed the
+animal to have been a reptile. Now it is a primary rule of nomenclature
+that the first name given to an animal must stick and may not be
+changed, even by the act of a zo�logical congress, so Zeuglodon must, so
+far as its name is concerned, masquerade as a reptile for the rest of
+its paleontological life. This, however, really matters very little,
+because scientific names are simply verbal handles by which we may grasp
+animals to describe them, and Dr. Le Conte, to show how little there may
+be in a name, called a beetle Gyascutus. Owen's name of Zeuglodon,
+although not tenable as a scientific name, is too good to be wasted, and
+being readily remembered and easily pronounced may be used as a popular
+name.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Koch's Hydrarchus, Composed of Portions of the
+Skeleton of Several Zeuglodons.]
+
+One might think that a creature sixty or seventy feet long was amply
+long enough, but Dr. Albert Koch thought otherwise, and did with
+Zeuglodon as, later on, he did with the Mastodon, combining the vertebr�
+of several individuals until he had a monster 114 feet long! This he
+exhibited in Europe under the name of Hydrarchus, or water king, finally
+disposing of the composite creature to the Museum of Dresden, where it
+was promptly reduced to its proper dimensions. The natural make-up of
+Zeuglodon is sufficiently composite without any aid from man, for the
+head and paddles are not unlike those of a seal, the ribs are like those
+of a manatee, and the shoulder blades are precisely like those of a
+whale, while the vertebr� are different from those of any other animal,
+even its own cousin and lesser contemporary Dorudon. There were also
+tiny hind legs tucked away beneath skin, but these, as well as many
+other parts of the animal's structure were unknown, until Mr. Charles
+Schuchert collected a series of specimens for the National Museum, from
+which it was possible to restore the entire skeleton. Owing to a rather
+curious circumstance the first attempt at a restoration was at fault;
+among the bones originally obtained by Mr. Schuchert there were none
+from the last half of the tail, an old gully having cut off the hinder
+portion of the backbone and destroyed the vertebr�. Not far away,
+however, was a big lump of stone containing several vertebr� of just the
+right size, and these were used as models to complete the papier-mach�
+skeleton shown at Atlanta, in 1894. But a year after Mr. Schuchert
+collected a series of vertebr�, beginning with the tip of the tail, and
+these showed conclusively that the first lot of tail vertebr� belonged
+to a creature still undescribed and one probably more like a whale than
+Zeuglodon himself, whose exact relationships are a little uncertain, as
+may be imagined from what was said of its structure. Mixed with the
+bones of Zeuglodon was the shell of a turtle, nearly three feet long,
+and part of the backbone of a great water-snake that must have been
+twenty-five feet long, both previously quite unknown. One more curious
+thing about Zeuglodon bones remains to be told, and then we are done
+with him; ordinarily a fossil bone will break indifferently in any
+direction, but the bones of Zeuglodon are built, like an onion, of
+concentric layers, and these have a great tendency to peel off during
+the preparation of a specimen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, as the wheels of time and change rolled slowly on, sharks again
+came uppermost, and the warmer Eocene and Miocene oceans appear to have
+fairly teemed with these sea wolves. There were small sharks with
+slender teeth for catching little fishes, there were larger sharks with
+saw-like teeth for cutting slices out of larger fishes, and there were
+sharks that might almost have swallowed the biggest fish of to-day
+whole, sharks of a size the waters had never before contained, and
+fortunately do not contain now. We know these monsters mostly by their
+teeth, for their skeletons were cartilaginous, and this absence of their
+remains is probably the reason why these creatures are passed by while
+the adjectives huge, immense, enormous are lavished on the Mosasaurs and
+Plesiosaurs--animals that the great-toothed shark, _Carcharodon
+megalodon_, might well have eaten at a meal. For the gaping jaws of one
+of these sharks, with its hundreds of gleaming teeth must, at a moderate
+estimate, have measured not less than six feet across.
+
+The great White Shark, the man-eater, so often found in story books, so
+rarely met with in real life, attains a length of thirty feet, and a man
+just makes him a good, satisfactory lunch. Now a tooth of this shark is
+an inch and a quarter long, while a tooth of the huge _Megalodon_ is
+commonly three, often four, and not infrequently five inches long.
+Applying the rule of three to such a tooth as this would give a shark
+120 feet long, bigger than most whales, to whom a man would be but a
+mouthful, just enough to whet his sharkship's appetite. Even granting
+that the rule of three unduly magnifies the dimensions of the brute, and
+making an ample reduction, there would still remain a fish between
+seventy-five and one hundred feet long, quite large enough to satisfy
+the most ambitious of _tuna_ fishers, and to have made bathing in the
+Miocene ocean unpopular. Contemporary with the great-toothed shark was
+another and closely related species that originated with him in Eocene
+times, and these two may possibly have had something to do with the
+extinction of Zeuglodon. This species is distinguished by having on
+either side of the base of the great triangular cutting teeth a little
+projection or cusp, like the "ear" on a jar, so that this species has
+been named _auriculatus_, or eared. The edges of the teeth are also more
+saw-like than in those of its greater relative, and as the species must
+have attained a length of fifty or sixty feet it may, with its better
+armature, have been quite as formidable. And, as perhaps the readers of
+these pages may know, the supply of teeth never ran short. Back of each
+tooth, one behind another arranged in serried ranks, lay a reserve of
+six or seven smaller, but growing teeth, and whenever a tooth of the
+front row was lost, the tooth immediately behind it took its place, and
+like a well-trained soldier kept the front line unbroken. Thus the teeth
+of sharks are continually developing at the back, and all the teeth are
+steadily pushing forward, a very simple mechanical arrangement causing
+the teeth to lie flat until they reach the front of the jaw and come
+into use.
+
+Once fairly started in life, these huge sharks spread themselves
+throughout the warm seas of the world, for there was none might stand
+before them and say nay. They swarmed along our southern coast, from
+Maryland to Texas; they swarmed everywhere that the water was
+sufficiently warm, for their teeth occur in Tertiary strata in many
+parts of the world, and the deep-sea dredges of the Challenger and
+Albatross have brought up their teeth by scores. And then--they
+perished, perished as utterly as did the hosts of Sennacherib. Why? We
+do not know. Did they devour everything large enough to be eaten
+throughout their habitat, and then fall to eating one another? Again, we
+do not know. But perish they did, while the smaller white shark, which
+came into being at the same time, still lives, as if to emphasize the
+fact that it is best not to overdo things, and that in the long run the
+victory is not _always_ to the largest.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The finest Mosasaur skeleton ever discovered, an almost complete
+skeleton of Tylosaurus dyspelor, 29 feet in length, may be seen at the
+head of the staircase leading to the Hall of Paleontology, in the
+American Museum of Natural History, New York. Another good specimen may
+be seen in the Yale University Museum, which probably has the largest
+collection of Mosasaurs in existence. Another fine collection is in the
+Museum of the State University of Kansas, at Lawrence._
+
+_The best Zeuglodon, the first to show the vestigial hind legs and to
+make clear other portions of the structure, is in the United States
+National Museum._
+
+_The great sharks are known in this country by their teeth only, and, as
+these are common in the phosphate beds, specimens may be seen in
+almost any collection. In the United States National Museum, the jaws of
+a twelve-foot blue shark are shown for comparison. The largest tooth in
+that collection is 5-3/4 inches high and 5 inches across the base. It
+takes five teeth of the blue shark to fill the same number of inches._
+
+_The Mosasaurs are described in detail by Professor S. W. Williston, in
+Vol. IV. of the "University Geological Survey of Kansas." There is a
+technical--and, consequently, uninteresting--account of Zeuglodon in
+Vol. XXIII. of the "Proceedings of the United States National Museum,"
+page 327._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 12.--A Tooth of Zeuglodon, one of the "Yoke Teeth,"
+from which it derives the name.]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+BIRDS OF OLD
+
+    "_With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
+    And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies._"
+
+
+When we come to discuss the topic of the earliest bird--not the one in
+the proverb--our choice of subjects is indeed limited, being restricted
+to the famous and oft-described Arch�opteryx from the quarries of
+Solenhofen, which at present forms the starting-point in the history of
+the feathered race. Bird-like, or at least feathered, creatures, must
+have existed before this, as it is improbable that feathers and flight
+were acquired at one bound, and this lends probability to the view that
+at least some of the tracks in the Connecticut Valley are really the
+footprints of birds. Not birds as we now know them, but still creatures
+wearing feathers, these being the distinctive badge and livery of the
+order. For we may well speak of the feathered race, the exclusive
+prerogative of the bird being not flight but feathers; no bird is
+without them, no other creature wears them, so that birds may be exactly
+defined in two words, feathered animals. Reptiles, and even mammals, may
+go quite naked or cover themselves with a defensive armor of bony plates
+or horny scales; but under the blaze of the tropical sun or in the chill
+waters of arctic seas birds wear feathers only, although in the penguins
+the feathers have become so changed that their identity is almost lost.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Arch�opteryx, the Earliest Known Bird. _From
+the specimen in the Berlin Museum._]
+
+So far as flight goes, there is one entire order of mammals, whose
+members, the bats, are quite as much at home in the air as the birds
+themselves, and in bygone days the empire of the air belonged to the
+pterodactyls; even frogs and fishes have tried to fly, and some of the
+latter have nearly succeeded in the attempt. As for wings, it may be
+said that they are made on very different patterns in such animals as
+the pterodactyl, bat, and bird, and that while the end to be achieved is
+the same, it is reached by very different methods. The wing membrane of
+a bat is spread between his out-stretched fingers, the thumb alone
+being left free, while in the pterodactyl the thumb is wanting and the
+membrane supported only by what in us is the little finger, a term that
+is a decided misnomer in the case of the pterodactyl. In birds the
+fingers have lost their individuality, and are modified for the
+attachment or support of the wing feathers, but in Arch�opteryx the hand
+had not reached this stage, for the fingers were partly free and tipped
+with claws.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Nature's Four Methods of Making a Wing. Bat,
+Pterodactyl, Arch�opteryx, and Modern Bird.]
+
+We get some side lights on the structure of primitive birds by studying
+the young and the earlier stages of living species, for in a very
+general way it may be said that the development of the individual is a
+sort of rough sketch or hasty outline of the development of the class of
+which it is a member; thus the transitory stages through which the chick
+passes before hatching give us some idea of the structure of the adult
+birds or bird-like creatures of long ago. Now, in embryonic birds the
+wing ends in a sort of paw and the fingers are separate, quite different
+from what they become a little later on, and not unlike their condition
+in Arch�opteryx, and even more like what is found in the wing of an
+ostrich.
+
+Then, too, there are a few birds still left, such as the ostrich, that
+have not kept pace with the others, and are a trifle more like reptiles
+than the vast majority of their relatives, and these help a little in
+explaining the structure of early birds. Among these is a queer bird
+with a queer name, Hoactzin, found in South America, which when young
+uses its little wings much like legs, just as we may suppose was done by
+birds of old, to climb about the branches. Mr. Quelch, who has studied
+these curious birds in their native wilds of British Guiana, tells us
+that soon after hatching, the nestlings begin to crawl about by means of
+their legs and wings, the well-developed claws on the thumb and finger
+being constantly in use for hooking to surrounding objects. If they are
+drawn from the nest by means of their legs, they hold on firmly to the
+twigs, both with their bill and wings; and if the nest be upset they
+hold on to all objects with which they come in contact by bill, feet,
+and wings, making considerable use of the bill, with the help of the
+clawed wings, to raise themselves to a higher level.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Young Hoactzins.]
+
+Thus, by putting these various facts together we obtain some pretty good
+ideas regarding the appearance and habits of the first birds. The
+immediate ancestors of birds, their exact point of departure from other
+vertebrates, is yet to be discovered; at one time it was considered that
+they were the direct descendants of Dinosaurs, or that at least both
+were derived from the same parent forms, and while that view was almost
+abandoned, it is again being brought forward with much to support it. It
+has also been thought that birds and those flying reptiles, the
+pterodactyls, have had a common ancestry, and the possibility of this is
+still entertained. Be that as it may, it is safe to consider that back
+in the past, earlier than the Jurassic, were creatures neither bird nor
+reptile, but possessing rudimentary feathers and having the promise of a
+wing in the structure of their fore legs, and some time one of these
+animals may come to light; until then Arch�opteryx remains the earliest
+known bird.
+
+In the Jurassic, then, when the Dinosaurs were the lords of the earth
+and small mammals just beginning to appear, we come upon traces of
+full-fledged birds. The first intimation of their presence was the
+imprint of a single feather found in that ancient treasure-house, the
+Solenhofen quarries; but as Hercules was revealed by his foot, so the
+bird was made evident by the feather whose discovery was announced
+August 15, 1861. And a little later, in September of the same year, the
+bird itself turned up, and in 1877 a second specimen was found, the two
+representing two species, if not two distinct genera. These were very
+different from any birds now living--so different, indeed, and bearing
+such evident traces of their reptilian ancestry, that it is necessary to
+place them apart from other animals in a separate division of the class
+birds.
+
+Arch�opteryx was considerably smaller than a crow, with a stout little
+head armed with sharp teeth (as scarce as hens' teeth was no joke in
+that distant period), while as he fluttered through the air he trailed
+after him a tail longer than his body, beset with feathers on either
+side. Everyone knows that nowadays the feathers of a bird's tail are
+arranged like the sticks of a fan, and that the tail opens and shuts
+like a fan. But in Arch�opteryx the feathers were arranged in pairs, a
+feather on each side of every joint of the tail, so that on a small
+scale the tail was something like that of a kite; and because of this
+long, lizard-like tail this bird and his immediate kith and kin are
+placed in a group dubbed Saurur�, or lizard tailed.
+
+Because impressions of feathers are not found all around these specimens
+some have thought that they were confined to certain portions of the
+body--the wings, tail, and thighs--the other parts being naked. There
+seems, however, no good reason to suppose that such was the case, for it
+is extremely improbable that such perfect and important feathers as
+those of the wings and tail should alone have been developed, while
+there are many reasons why the feathers of the body might have been lost
+before the bird was covered by mud, or why their impressions do not
+show.
+
+It was a considerable time after the finding of the first specimen that
+the presence of teeth in the jaws was discovered, partly because the
+British Museum specimen was imperfect,[6] and partly because no one
+suspected that birds had ever possessed teeth, and so no one ever looked
+for them. When, in 1877, a more complete example was found, the
+existence of teeth was unmistakably shown; but in the meantime, in
+February, 1873, Professor Marsh had announced the presence of teeth in
+Hesperornis, and so to him belongs the credit of being the discoverer of
+birds with teeth.
+
+[6] _The skull was lacking, and a part of the upper jaw lying to one
+side was thought to belong to a fish._
+
+The next birds that we know are from our own country, and although
+separated by an interval of thousands of years from the Jurassic
+Arch�opteryx, time enough for the members of one group to have quite
+lost their wings, they still retain teeth, and in this respect the most
+bird-like of them is quite unlike any modern bird. These come from the
+chalk beds of western Kansas, and the first specimens were obtained by
+Professor Marsh in his expeditions of 1870 and 1871, but not until a few
+years later, after the material had been cleaned and was being studied,
+was it ascertained that these birds were armed with teeth. The smaller
+of these birds, which was apparently not unlike a small gull in general
+appearance, was, saving its teeth, so thoroughly a bird that it may be
+passed by without further notice, but the larger was remarkable in many
+ways. Hesperornis, the western bird, was a great diver, in some ways the
+greatest of the divers, for it stood higher than the king penguin,
+though more slender and graceful in general build, looking somewhat like
+an overgrown, absolutely wingless loon.
+
+The penguins, as everyone knows, swim with their front limbs--we can't
+call them wings--which, though containing all the bones of a wing, have
+become transformed into powerful paddles; Hesperornis, on the other
+hand, swam altogether with its legs--swam so well with them, indeed,
+that through disuse the wings dwindled away and vanished, save one bone.
+This, however, is not stating the theory quite correctly; of course the
+matter cannot be actually proved. Hesperornis was a large bird, upwards
+of five feet in length, and if its ancestors were equally bulky their
+wings were quite too large to be used in swimming under water, as are
+those of such short-winged forms as the Auks which fly under the water
+quite as much as they fly over it. Hence the wings were closely folded
+upon the body so as to offer the least possible resistance, and being
+disused, they and their muscles dwindled, while the bones and muscles
+of the legs increased by constant use. By the time the wings were small
+enough to be used in so dense a medium as water the muscles had become
+too feeble to move them, and so degeneration proceeded until but one
+bone remained, a mere vestige of the wing that had been. The penguins
+retain their great breast muscles, and so did the Great Auk, because
+their wings are used in swimming, since it requires even more strength
+to move a small wing in water than it does to move a large wing in the
+thinner air. As for our domesticated fowls--the turkeys, chickens, and
+ducks--there has not been sufficient lapse of time for their muscles to
+dwindle, and besides artificial selection, the breeding of fowls for
+food has kept up the mere size of the muscles, although these lack the
+strength to be found in those of wild birds.
+
+As a swimming bird, one that swims with its legs and not with its wings,
+Hesperornis has probably never been equalled, for the size and
+appearance of the bones indicate great power, while the bones of the
+foot were so joined to those of the leg as to turn edgewise as the foot
+was brought forward and thus to offer the least possible resistance to
+the water. It is a remarkable fact that the leg bones of Hesperornis are
+hollow, remarkable because as a rule the bones of aquatic animals are
+more or less solid, their weight being supported by the water; but those
+of the great diver were almost as light as if it had dwelt upon the dry
+land. That it did not dwell there is conclusively shown by its build,
+and above all by its feet, for the foot of a running bird is modified in
+quite another way.
+
+The bird was probably covered with smooth, soft feathers, something like
+those of an Apteryx; this we know because Professor Williston found a
+specimen showing the impression of the skin of the lower part of the leg
+as well as of the feathers that covered the "thigh" and head. While such
+a covering seems rather inadequate for a bird of such exclusively
+aquatic habits as Hesperornis must have been, there seems no getting
+away from the facts in the case in the shape of Professor Williston's
+specimen, and we have in the Snake Bird, one of the most aquatic of
+recent birds, an instance of similarly poor covering. As all know who
+have seen this bird at home, its feathers shed the water very
+imperfectly, and after long-continued submersion become saturated, a
+fact which partly accounts for the habit the bird has of hanging itself
+out to dry.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Hesperornis, the Great Toothed Diver. _From a
+drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+The restoration which Mr. Gleeson has drawn differs radically from any
+yet made, and is the result of a careful study of the specimen belonging
+to the United States National Museum. No one can appreciate the
+peculiarities of Hesperornis and its remarkable departures from other
+swimming birds who has not seen the skeleton mounted in a swimming
+attitude. The great length of the legs, their position at the middle of
+the body, the narrowness of the body back of the hip joint, and the
+disproportionate length of the outer toe are all brought out in a manner
+which a picture of the bird squatting upon its haunches fails utterly to
+show. As for the tail, it is evident from the size and breadth of the
+bones that something of the kind was present; it is also evident that it
+was not like that of an ordinary bird, and so it has been drawn with
+just a suggestion of Arch�opteryx about it.
+
+The most extraordinary thing about Hesperornis, however, is the position
+of the legs relative to the body, and this is something that was not
+even suspected until the skeleton was mounted in a swimming attitude. As
+anyone knows who has watched a duck swim, the usual place for the feet
+and legs is beneath and in a line with the body. But in our great
+extinct diver the articulations of the leg bones are such that this is
+impossible, and the feet and lower joint of the legs (called the tarsus)
+must have stood out nearly at right angles to the body, like a pair of
+oars. This is so peculiar and anomalous an attitude for a bird's legs
+that, although apparently indicated by the shape of the bones, it was at
+first thought to be due to the crushing and consequent distortion to
+which the bones had been subjected, and an endeavor was made to place
+the legs in the ordinary position, even though this was done at the
+expense of some little dislocation of the joints. But when the mounting
+of the skeleton had advanced further it became more evident that
+Hesperornis was not an ordinary bird, and that he could not have swum in
+the usual manner, since this would have brought his great knee-caps up
+into his body, which would have been uncomfortable. And so, at the cost
+of some little time and trouble,[7] the mountings were so changed that
+the legs stood out at the sides of the body, as shown in the picture.
+
+[7] _The mounting of fossil bones is quite a different matter from the
+wiring of an ordinary skeleton, since the bones are not only so hard
+that they cannot be bored and wired like those of a recent animal, but
+they are so brittle and heavy that often they will not sustain their own
+weight. Hence such bones must be supported from the outside, and to do
+this so that the mountings will be strong enough to support their
+weight, allow the bones to be removed for study, and yet be
+inconspicuous, is a difficult task._
+
+A final word remains to be said about toothed birds, which is, that the
+visitor who looks upon one for the first time will probably be
+disappointed. The teeth are so loosely implanted in the jaw that most of
+them fall out shortly after death, while the few that remain are so
+small as not to attract observation.
+
+By the time the Eocene Period was reached, even before that, birds had
+become pretty much what we now see them, and very little change has
+taken place in them since that time; they seem to have become so exactly
+adapted to the conditions of existence that no further modification has
+taken place. This may be expressed in another way, by saying that while
+the Mammals of the Eocene have no near relatives among those now living,
+entire large groups having passed completely out of existence, the few
+birds that we know might, so far as their appearance and affinities go,
+have been killed yesterday.
+
+Were we to judge of the former abundance of birds by the number we find
+in a fossil state, we should conclude that in the early days of the
+world they were remarkably scarce, for bird bones are among the rarest
+of fossils. But from the high degree of development evidenced by the few
+examples that have come to light, and the fact that these represent
+various and quite distinct species,[8] we are led to conclude that
+birds were abundant enough, but that we simply do not find them.
+
+[8] _But three birds, besides a stray feather or two, are so far known
+from the Eocene of North America. One of these is a fowl not very unlike
+some of the small curassows of South America; another is a little bird,
+supposed to be related to the sparrows, while the third is a large bird
+of uncertain relationships._
+
+Several eggs, too--or, rather, casts of eggs--have lately been found in
+the Cretaceous and Miocene strata of the West; and, as eggs and birds
+are usually associated, we are liable at any time to come upon the bones
+of the birds that laid them.
+
+To the writer's mind no thoroughly satisfactory explanation has been
+given for the scarcity of bird remains; but the reason commonly advanced
+is that, owing to their lightness, dead birds float for a much longer
+time than other animals, and hence are more exposed to the ravages of
+the weather and the attacks of carrion-feeding animals. It has also been
+said that the power of flight enabled birds to escape calamities that
+caused the death of contemporary animals; but all birds do not fly; and
+birds do fall victims to storms, cold, and starvation, and even perish
+of pestilence, like the Cormorants of Bering Island, whose ranks have
+twice been decimated by disease.
+
+It is true that where carnivorous animals abound, dead birds do
+disappear quickly; and my friend Dr. Stejneger tells me that, while
+hundreds of dead sea-fowl are cast on the shores of the Commander
+Islands, it is a rare thing to find one after daylight, as the bodies
+are devoured by the Arctic foxes that prowl about the shores at night.
+But, again, as in the Miocene of Southern France and in the Pliocene of
+Oregon, remains of birds are fairly numerous, showing that, under proper
+conditions, their bones are preserved for future reference, so that we
+may hope some day to come upon specimens that will enable us to round
+out the history of bird life in the past.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The first discovered specimen of Arch�opteryx, Arch�opteryx macrura, is
+in the British Museum, the second more complete example is in the Royal
+Museum of Natural History, Berlin. The largest collection of toothed
+birds, including the types of Hesperornis, Ichthyornis and others, is in
+the Yale University Museum, at New Haven. The United States National
+Museum at Washington has a fine mounted skeleton of Hesperornis, and the
+State University of Kansas, at Lawrence, has the example showing the
+impressions of feathers._
+
+_For scientific descriptions of these birds the reader is referred to
+Owen's paper "On the Arch�opteryx of von Meyer, with a Description of
+the Fossil Remains, etc.," in the "Transactions of the Philosophical
+Society of London for 1863," page 33, and "Odontornithes, a Monograph of
+the Extinct Toothed Birds of North America," by O. C. Marsh. Much
+popular and scientific information concerning the early birds is to be
+found in Newton's "Dictionary of Birds," and "The Story of Bird Life,"
+by W. P. Pycraft; the "Structure and Life of Birds," by F. W. Headley;
+"The Story of the Birds," by J. Newton Baskett._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Arch�opteryx as Restored by Mr. Pycraft.]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE DINOSAURS
+
+    "_Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small._"
+
+
+A few million years ago, geologists and physicists do not agree upon the
+exact number, although both agree upon the millions, when the Rocky
+Mountains were not yet born and the now bare and arid western plains a
+land of lakes, rivers, and luxuriant vegetation, the region was
+inhabited by a race of strange and mighty reptiles upon whom science has
+bestowed the appropriate name of Dinosaurs, or terrible lizards.
+
+Our acquaintance with the Dinosaurs is comparatively recent, dating from
+the early part of the nineteenth century, and in America, at least, the
+date may be set at 1818, when the first Dinosaur remains were found in
+the Valley of the Connecticut, although they naturally were not
+recognized as such, nor had the term been devised. The first Dinosaur
+to be formally recognized as representing quite a new order of reptiles
+was the carnivorous Megalosaur, found near Oxford, England, in 1824.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Thespesius. A Common Herbivorous Dinosaur of
+the Cretaceous. _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+For a long time our knowledge of Dinosaurs was very imperfect and
+literally fragmentary, depending mostly upon scattered teeth, isolated
+vertebr�, or fragments of bone picked up on the surface or casually
+encountered in some mine or quarry. Now, however, thanks mainly to the
+labors of American pal�ontologists, thanks also to the rich deposits of
+fossils in our Western States, we have an extensive knowledge of the
+Dinosaurs, of their size, structure, habits, and general appearance.
+
+There are to-day no animals living that are closely related to them;
+none have lived for a long period of time, for the Dinosaurs came to an
+end in the Cretaceous, and it can only be said that the crocodiles, on
+the one hand, and the ostriches, on the other, are the nearest existing
+relatives of these great reptiles.
+
+For, though so different in outward appearance, birds and reptiles are
+structurally quite closely allied, and the creeping snake and the bird
+on which it preys are relatives, although any intimate relationship
+between them is of the serpent's making, and is strongly objected to by
+the bird.
+
+But if we compare the skeleton of a Dinosaur with that of an ostrich--a
+young one is preferable--and with those of the earlier birds, we shall
+find that many of the barriers now existing between reptiles and birds
+are broken down, and that they have many points in common. In fact, save
+in the matter of clothes, wherein birds differ from all other animals,
+the two great groups are not so very far apart.
+
+The Dinosaurs were by no means confined to North America, although the
+western United States seem to have been their headquarters, but ranged
+pretty much over the world, for their remains have been found in every
+continent, even in far-off New Zealand.
+
+In point of time they ranged from the Trias to the Upper Cretaceous,
+their golden age, marking the culminating point of reptilian life, being
+in the Jurassic, when huge forms stalked by the sea-shore, browsed amid
+the swamps, or disported themselves along the reedy margins of lakes
+and rivers.
+
+They had their day, a day of many thousand years, and then passed away,
+giving place to the superior race of mammals which was just springing
+into being when the huge Dinosaurs were in the heyday of their
+existence.
+
+And it does seem as if in the dim and distant past, as in the present,
+brains were a potent factor in the struggle for supremacy; for, though
+these reptiles were giants in size, dominating the earth through mere
+brute force, they were dwarfs in intellect.
+
+The smallest human brain that is thought to be compatible with life
+itself weighs a little over ten ounces, the smallest that can exist with
+reasoning powers is two pounds; this in a creature weighing from 120 to
+150 pounds.
+
+What do we find among Dinosaurs? Thespesius, or Claosaurus, which may
+have walked where Baltimore now stands, was twenty-five feet in length
+and stood a dozen feet high in his bare feet, had a brain smaller than a
+man's clenched fist, weighing less than one pound.
+
+Brontosaurus, in some respects the biggest brute that ever walked, was
+but little better off, and Triceratops, and his relatives, creatures
+having twice the bulk of an elephant, weighing probably over ten tons,
+possessed a brain weighing not over two pounds!
+
+How much of what we term intelligence could such a creature
+possess--what was the extent of its reasoning powers? Judging from our
+own standpoint and the small amount of intellect apparent in some humans
+with much larger brains, these big reptiles must have known just about
+enough to have eaten when they were hungry, anything more was
+superfluous.
+
+However, intelligence is one thing, life another, and the spinal cord,
+with its supply of nerve-substance, doubtless looked after the mere
+mechanical functions of life; and while even the spinal cord is in many
+cases quite small, in some places, particularly in the sacral region, it
+is subject to considerable enlargement. This is notably true of
+Stegosaurus, where the sacral enlargement is twenty times the bulk of
+the puny brain--a fact noted by Professor Marsh, and seized upon by the
+newspapers, which announced that he had discovered a Dinosaur with a
+brain in its pelvis.
+
+In their great variety of size and shape the Dinosaurs form an
+interesting parallel with the Marsupials of Australia. For just as these
+are, as it were, an epitome of the class of mammals, mimicking the
+herbivores, carnivores, rodents and even monkeys, so there are
+carnivorous and herbivorous Dinosaurs--Dinosaurs that dwelt on land and
+others that habitually resided in the water, those that walked upright
+and those that crawled about on all fours; and, while there are no hints
+that any possessed the power of flight, some members of the group are
+very bird-like in form and structure, so much so that it has been
+thought that the two may have had a common ancestry.
+
+The smallest of the Dinosaurs whose acquaintance we have made were
+little larger than chickens; the largest claim the distinction of being
+the largest known quadrupeds that have walked the face of the earth, the
+giants not only of their day, but of all time, before whose huge frames
+the bones of the Mammoth, that familiar byword for all things great,
+seem slight.
+
+For Brontosaurus, the Thunder Lizard, beneath whose mighty tread the
+earth shook, and his kindred were from 40 to 60 feet long and 10 to 14
+feet high, their thigh bones measuring 5 to 6 feet in length, being the
+largest single bones known to us, while some of the vertebr� were 4-1/2
+feet high, exceeding in dimensions those of a whale.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 19--A Hind Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, the
+Largest of the Dinosaurs.]
+
+The group to which Brontosaurus belongs, including Diplodocus and
+Morosaurus, is distinguished by a large, though rather short, body,
+very long neck and tail, and, for the size of the animal, a very small
+head. In fact, the head was so small and, in the case of Diplodocus, so
+poorly provided with teeth that it must have been quite a task, or a
+long-continued pleasure, according to the state of its digestive
+apparatus, for the animal to have eaten its daily meal.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 20.--A Single Vertebra of Brontosaurus.]
+
+An elephant weighing 5 tons eats 100 pounds of hay and 25 pounds of
+grain for his day's ration; but, as this food is in a comparatively
+concentrated form, it would require at least twice this weight of green
+fodder.
+
+It is a difficult matter to estimate the weight of a live Diplodocus or
+a Brontosaurus, but it is pretty safe to say that it would not be far
+from 20 tons, and that one would devour at the very least something over
+700 pounds of leaves or twigs or plants each day--more, if the animal
+felt really hungry.
+
+But here we must, even if reluctantly, curb our imagination a little and
+consider another point: the cold-blooded, sluggish reptiles, as we know
+them to-day, do not waste their energies in rapid movements, or in
+keeping the temperature of their bodies above that of the air, and so by
+no means require the amount of food needed by more active, warm-blooded
+animals. Alligators, turtles, and snakes will go for weeks, even months,
+without food, and while this applies more particularly to those that
+dwell in temperate climes and during their winter hibernation
+practically suspend the functions of digestion and respiration, it is
+more or less true of all reptiles. And as there is little reason for
+supposing that reptiles behaved in the past any differently from what
+they do in the present, these great Dinosaurs may, after all, not have
+been gifted with such ravenous appetites as one might fancy. Still, it
+is dangerous to lay down any hard and fast laws concerning animals, and
+he who writes about them is continually obliged to qualify his
+remarks--in sporting parlance, to hedge a little, and in the present
+instance there is some reason, based on the arrangement of vertebr� and
+ribs, to suppose that the lungs of Dinosaurs were somewhat like those of
+birds, and that, as a corollary, their blood may have been better
+a�rated and warmer than that of living reptiles. But, to return to the
+question of food.
+
+From the peculiar character of the articulations of the limb-bones, it
+is inferred that these animals were largely aquatic in their habits, and
+fed on some abundant species of water plants. One can readily see the
+advantage of the long neck in browsing off the vegetation on the bottom
+of shallow lakes, while the animal was submerged, or in rearing the head
+aloft to scan the surrounding shores for the approach of an enemy. Or,
+with the tail as a counterpoise, the entire body could be reared out of
+water and the head be raised some thirty feet in the air.
+
+Triceratops, he of the three-horned face, had a remarkable skull which
+projected backward over the neck, like a fireman's helmet, or a
+sunbonnet worn hind side before, while over each eye was a massive horn
+directed forward, a third, but much smaller horn being sometimes present
+on the nose.
+
+The little "Horned Toad," which isn't a toad at all, is the nearest
+suggestion we have to-day of Triceratops; but, could he realize the
+ambition of the frog in the fable and swell himself to the dimensions of
+an ox, he would even then be but a pigmy compared with his ancient and
+distant relative.
+
+So far as mere appearance goes he would compare very well, for while so
+much is said about the strange appearance of the Dinosaurs, it is to be
+borne in mind that their peculiarities are enhanced by their size, and
+that there are many lizards of to-day that lack only stature to be even
+more _bizarre_; and, for example, were the Australian Moloch but big
+enough, he could give even Stegosaurus "points" in more ways than one.
+
+Standing before the skull of Triceratops, looking him squarely in the
+face, one notices in front of each eye a thick guard of projecting bone,
+and while this must have interfered with vision directly ahead it must
+have also furnished protection for the eye. So long as Triceratops faced
+an adversary he must have been practically invulnerable, but as he was
+the largest animal of his time, upward of twenty-five feet in length, it
+is probable that his combats were mainly with those of his own kind and
+the subject of dispute some fair female upon whom two rival suitors had
+cast covetous eyes. What a sight it would have been to have seen two of
+these big brutes in mortal combat as they charged upon each other with
+all the impetus to be derived from ten tons of infuriate flesh! We may
+picture to ourselves horn clashing upon horn, or glancing from each bony
+shield until some skilful stroke or unlucky slip placed one combatant at
+the mercy of the other, and he went down before the blows of his
+adversary "as falls on Mount Alvernus a thunder-smitten oak."
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Moloch. A Modern Lizard that Surpasses the
+Stegosaurs in All but Size. _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+A pair of Triceratops horns in the National Museum bears witness to such
+encounters, for one is broken midway between tip and base; and that it
+was broken during life is evident from the fact that the stump is healed
+and rounded over, while the size of the horns shows that their owner
+reached a ripe old age.
+
+For, unlike man and the higher vertebrates, reptiles and fishes do not
+have a maximum standard of size which is soon reached and rarely
+exceeded, but continue to grow throughout life, so that the size of a
+turtle, a crocodile, or a Dinosaur tells something of the duration of
+its life.
+
+Before quitting Triceratops let us glance for a moment at its skeleton.
+Now among other things a skeleton is the solution of a problem in
+mechanics, and in Triceratops the head so dominates the rest of the
+structure that one might almost imagine the skull was made first and the
+body adjusted to it. The great head seems made not only for offence and
+defence; the spreading frill serves for the attachment of muscles to
+sustain the weight of the skull, while the work of the muscles is made
+easier by the fact that the frill reaches so far back of the junction of
+head with neck as to largely counterbalance the weight of the face and
+jaws. When we restored the skull of this animal it was found that the
+centre of gravity lay back of the eye. Several of the bones of the neck
+are united in one mass to furnish a firm attachment for the muscles that
+support and move the skull, but as the movements of the neck are already
+restricted by the overhanging frill, this loss of motion is no
+additional disadvantage.
+
+[Illustration: TRICERATOPS PRORSUS Marsh Fig. 22.--Skeleton of
+Triceratops.]
+
+To support all this weight of skull and body requires very massive
+legs, and as the fore legs are very short, this enables Triceratops to
+browse comfortably from the ground by merely lowering the front of the
+head.
+
+These forms we have been considering were the giants of the group, but a
+commoner species, Thespesius, though less in bulk than those just
+mentioned, was still of goodly proportions, for, as he stalked about,
+the top of his head was twelve feet from the ground.
+
+Thespesius and his kin seem to have been comparatively abundant, for
+they have a wide distribution, and many specimens, some almost perfect,
+have been discovered in this country and abroad. No less than
+twenty-nine Iguanodons, a European relative of Thespesius, were found in
+one spot in mining for coal at Bernissart, Belgium. Here, during long
+years of Cretaceous time, a river slowly cut its way through the
+coal-bearing strata to a depth of 750 feet, a depth almost twice as
+great as the deepest part of the gorge of Niagara, and then, this being
+accomplished, began the work of filling up the valley it had excavated.
+
+It was then a sluggish stream with marshy borders, a stream subject to
+frequent floods, when the water, turbid with mud and laden with sand,
+overflowed its banks, leaving them, as the waters subsided, covered
+thickly with mud. Here, amidst the luxuriant vegetation of a
+semi-tropical climate, lived and died the Iguanodons, and here the pick
+of the miner rescued them from their long entombment to form part of the
+treasures of the museum at Brussels.
+
+Like other reptiles, living and extinct, Thespesius was continually
+renewing his teeth, so that as fast as one tooth was worn out it was
+replaced by another, a point wherein Thespesius had a decided advantage
+over ourselves. On the other hand, as there was a reserve supply of
+something like 400 teeth in the lower jaw alone, what an opportunity for
+the toothache!
+
+And then we have a multitude of lesser Dinosaurs, including the active,
+predatory species with sharp claws and double-edged teeth. Megalosaurus,
+the first of the Dinosaurs to be really known, was one of these
+carnivorous species, and from our West comes a near relative,
+Ceratosaurus, the nose-horned lizard, a queer beast with tiny fore legs,
+powerful, sharp-clawed hind feet, and well-armed jaws. A most formidable
+foe he seems, the more that the hollow bones speak of active movements,
+and Professor Cope pictured him, or a near relative, vigorously engaged
+in combat with his fellows, or preying upon the huge but helpless
+herbivores of the marshes, leaping, biting, and tearing his enemy to
+pieces with tooth and claw.
+
+Professor Osborn, on the other hand, is inclined to consider him as a
+reptilian hyena, feeding upon carrion, although one can but feel that
+such an armament is not entirely in the interests of peace.
+
+Last, but by no means least, are the Stegosaurs, or plated lizards, for
+not only were they beasts of goodly size, but they were among the most
+singular of all known animals, singular even for Dinosaurs. They had
+diminutive heads, small fore legs, long tails armed on either side near
+the tip, with two pairs of large spines, while from these spines to the
+neck ran series of large, but thin, and sharp-edged plates standing
+on edge, so that their backs looked like the bottom of a boat provided
+with a number of little centreboards. Just how these plates were
+arranged is not decided beyond a peradventure, but while originally
+figured as having them in a single series down the back it seems much
+more probable that they formed parallel rows.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 23.--The Horned Ceratosaurus. A Carnivorous
+Dinosaur. _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+The largest of these plates were two feet in height and length, and not
+more than an inch thick, except at the base, where they were enlarged
+and roughened to give a firm hold to the thick skin in which they were
+imbedded. Be it remembered, too, that these plates and spines were
+doubtless covered with horn, so that they were even longer in life than
+as we now see them. The tail spines varied in length, according to the
+species, from eight or nine inches to nearly three feet, and some of
+them have a diameter of six inches at the base. They were swung by a
+tail eight to ten feet long, and as a visitor was heard to remark, one
+wouldn't like to be about such an animal in fly time.
+
+Such were some of the strange and mighty animals that once roamed this
+continent from the valley of the Connecticut, where they literally left
+their footprints on the sands of time, to the Rocky Mountains, where the
+ancient lakes and rivers became cemeteries for the entombment of their
+bones.
+
+The labor of the collector has gathered their fossil remains from many a
+Western canyon, the skill of the preparator has removed them from their
+stony sepulchres and the study of the anatomist has restored them as
+they were in life.
+
+
+_REFERENCES._
+
+_Most of our large museums have on exhibition fine specimens of many
+Dinosaurs, comprising skulls, limbs, and large portions of their
+skeletons. The American Museum of Natural History, New York, has the
+largest and finest display. The first actual skeleton of a Dinosaur to
+be mounted in this country was the splendid Claosaurus at the Yale
+University Museum, where other striking pieces are also to be seen. The
+mounting of this Claosaurus, which is 29 feet long and 13 feet high,
+took an entire year. The United States National Museum is
+particularly rich in examples of the great, horned Triceratops, while
+the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, has the best Diplodocus. The Field
+Columbian Museum and the Universities of Wyoming and Colorado all have
+good collections._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Stegosaurus. An Armored Dinosaur of the
+Jurassic. _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+_The largest single bone of a Dinosaur is the thigh bone of a
+Brontosaurus in the Field Columbian Museum, this measuring 6 feet 8
+inches in length. The height of a complete hind leg in the American
+Museum of Natural History is 10 feet, while a single claw measures 6 by
+9 inches. The skeleton of Triceratops restored in papier-mach� for the
+Pan-American Exposition measured 25 feet from tip of nose to end of tail
+and was 10 feet 6 inches to the top of the backbone over the hips, this
+being the highest point. The head in the United States National Museum
+used as a model is 5 feet 6 inches long in a straight line and 4 feet 3
+inches across the frill. There is a skull in the Yale University Museum
+even larger than this._
+
+_Articles relating to Dinosaurs are mostly technical in their nature and
+scattered through various scientific journals. The most accessible
+probably is "The Dinosaurs of North America," by Professor O. C. Marsh,
+published as part of the sixteenth annual report of the United States
+Geological Survey. This contains many figures of the skulls, bones, and
+entire skeletons of many Dinosaurs._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 25.--Skull of Ceratosaurus. _From a specimen in the
+United States National Museum._]
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+READING THE RIDDLES OF THE ROCKS
+
+    "_And the first Morning of Creation wrote
+    What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read._"
+
+
+It is quite possible that the reader may wish to know something of the
+manner in which the specimens described in these pages have been
+gathered, how we acquire our knowledge of Brontosaurus, Claosaurus, or
+any of the many other "sauruses," and how their restorations have been
+made.
+
+There was a time, not so very long ago, when fossils were looked upon as
+mere sports of Nature, and little attention paid to them; later their
+true nature was recognized, though they were merely gathered haphazard
+as occasion might offer. But now, and for many years past, the
+fossil-bearing rocks of many parts of the world have been systematically
+worked, and from the material thus obtained we have acquired a great
+deal of information regarding the inhabitants of the ancient world. This
+is particularly true of our own western country, where a vast amount of
+collecting has been done, although very much remains to be done in the
+matter of perfecting this knowledge, and hosts of new animals remain to
+be discovered. For this information we are almost as much indebted to
+the collector who has gathered the needed material, and the preparator
+whose patience and skill have made it available for study, as to the
+pal�ontologist who has interpreted the meaning of the bones.
+
+To collect successfully demands not only a knowledge of the rocks in
+which fossils occur and of the localities where they are best exposed to
+view, but an eye quick to detect a piece of bone protruding from a rock
+or lying amongst the shale, and, above all, the ability to work a
+deposit to advantage after it has been found. The collector of living
+animals hies to regions where there is plenty for bird and beast to eat
+and drink, but the collector of extinct animals cares little for what is
+on the surface of the earth; his great desire is to see as much as
+possible of what may lie beneath. So the prospector in search of fossils
+betakes himself to some region where the ceaseless warfare waged by
+water against the dry land has seamed the face of the earth with
+countless gullies and canyons, or carved it into slopes and bluffs in
+which the edges of the bone-bearing strata are exposed to view, and
+along these he skirts, ever on the look-out for some projecting bit of
+bone. The country is an almost shadeless desert, burning hot by day,
+uncomfortably cool at night. Water is scarce, and when it can be found,
+often has little to commend it save wetness; but the collector is buoyed
+up through all this with the hope that he may discover some creature new
+to science that shall not only be bigger and uglier and stranger than
+any heretofore found, but shall be the long-sought form needed for the
+solution of some difficult problem in the history of the past.
+
+Now collecting is a lottery, differing from most lotteries, however, in
+that while some of the returns may be pretty small, there are few
+absolute blanks and some remarkably large prizes, and every collector
+hopes that it may fall to his lot to win one of these, and is willing to
+work long and arduously for the chance of obtaining it.
+
+It may give some idea of the chances to say that some years ago Dr.
+Wortman spent almost an entire season in the field without success, and
+then, at the eleventh hour, found the now famous skeleton of Phenacodus,
+or that a party from Princeton actually camped within 100 yards of a
+rich deposit of rare fossils and yet failed to discover it.
+
+Let us, however, suppose that the reconnaissance has been successful,
+and that an outcrop of bone has been found, serving like a tombstone
+carven with strange characters to indicate the burial-place of some
+primeval monster. Possibly Nature long ago rifled the grave, washing
+away much of the skeleton, and leaving little save the fragments visible
+on the surface; on the other hand, these pieces may form part of a
+complete skeleton, and there is no way to decide this important question
+save by actual excavation. The manner of disinterment varies, but much
+depends on whether the fossil lies in comparatively loose shale or is
+imbedded in the solid rock, whether the strata are level or dip downward
+into the hillside. If, unfortunately, this last is the case, it
+necessitates a careful shoring up of the excavation with props of
+cotton-wood or such boards as may have been brought along to box
+specimens, or it may even be necessary to run a short tunnel in order to
+get at some coveted bone. Should the specimen lie in shale, as is the
+case with most of the large reptiles that have been collected, much of
+that work may be done with pick and shovel; but if it is desirable or
+necessary to work in firm rock, drills and hammers, wedges, even powder,
+may be needed to rend from Nature her long-kept secrets. In any event, a
+detailed plan is made of the excavation, and each piece of bone or
+section of rock duly recorded therein by letter and number, so that
+later on the relation of the parts to one another may be known, or the
+various sections assembled in the work-room exactly as they lay in the
+quarry. Bones which lie in loose rock are often, one might say usually,
+more or less broken, and when a bone three, four, or even six feet
+long, weighing anywhere from 100 to 1,000 pounds, has been shattered to
+fragments the problem of removing it is no easy one. But here the skill
+of the collector comes into play to treat the fossil as a surgeon treats
+a fractured limb, to cover it with plaster bandages, and brace it with
+splints of wood or iron so that the specimen may not only be taken from
+the ground but endure in safety the coming journey of a thousand or more
+miles. For simpler cases or lighter objects strips of sacking, or even
+paper, applied with flour and water, suffice, or pieces of sacking
+soaked in thin plaster may be laid over the bone, first covering it with
+thin paper in order that the plaster jacket may simply stiffen and not
+adhere to it. Collecting has not always been carried on in this
+systematic manner, for the development of the present methods has been
+the result of years of experience; formerly there was a mere
+skimming-over of the surface in what Professor Marsh used to term the
+potato-gathering style, but now the effort is made to remove specimens
+intact, often imbedded in large masses of rock, in order that all parts
+may be preserved.
+
+We will take it for granted that our specimens have safely passed
+through all perils by land and water, road and rail; that they have been
+quarried, boxed, carted over a roadless country to the nearest railway,
+and have withstood 2,000 miles of jolting in a freight-car. The first
+step in reconstruction has been taken; the problem, now that the boxes
+are reposing on the work-room floor, is to make the blocks of stone give
+up the secrets they have guarded for ages, to free the bones from their
+enveloping matrix in order that they may tell us something of the life
+of the past. The method of doing this varies with the conditions under
+which the material has been gathered, and if from hard clay, chalk, or
+shale, the process, though tedious enough at best, is by no means so
+difficult as if the specimens are imbedded in solid rock. In this case
+the fragments from a given section of quarry must be assembled according
+to the plan which has been carefully made as the work of exhumation
+progressed, all pieces containing bone must be stuck together, and weak
+parts strengthened with gum or glue. Now the mass is attacked with
+hammer and chisel, and the surrounding matrix slowly and carefully cut
+away until the contained bone is revealed, a process much simpler and
+more expeditious in the telling than in the actuality; for the
+preparator may not use the heavy tools of the ordinary stone-cutter:
+sometimes an awl, or even a glover's needle, must suffice him, and the
+chips cut off are so small and such care must be taken not to injure the
+bone that the work is really tedious. This may, perhaps, be better
+appreciated by saying that to clean a single vertebra of such a huge
+Dinosaur as Diplodocus may require a month of continuous labor, and that
+a score of these big and complicated bones, besides others of simpler
+structure, are included in the backbone. The finished specimen weighs
+over 120 pounds, while as originally collected, with all the adherent
+rock, the weight was twice or thrice as great. Such a mass as this is
+comparatively small, and sometimes huge blocks are taken containing
+entire skulls or a number of bones, and not infrequently weighing a
+ton. The largest single specimen is a skull of Triceratops, collected by
+Mr. J. B. Hatcher, which weighed, when boxed, 3,650 pounds.
+
+Or, as the result of some mishap, or through the work of an
+inexperienced collector, a valuable specimen may arrive in the shape of
+a box full of irregular fragments of stone compared with which a
+dissected map or an old-fashioned Chinese puzzle is simplicity itself,
+and one may spend hours looking for some piece whose proper location
+gives the clew to an entire section, and days, even, may be consumed
+before the task is completed. While this not only tries the patience,
+but the eyes as well, there is, nevertheless, a fascination about this
+work of fashioning a bone out of scores, possibly hundreds, of
+fragments, and watching the irregular bits of stone shaping themselves
+into a mosaic that forms a portion of some creature, possibly quite new
+to science, and destined to bear a name as long as itself. And thus,
+after many days of toil, the bone that millions of years before sank
+into the mud of some old lake-bottom or was buried in the sandy shoals
+of an ancient river, is brought to light once more to help tell the tale
+of the creatures of the past.
+
+One bone might convey a great deal of information; on the other hand it
+might reveal very little; for, while it is very painful to say so, the
+popular impression that it is possible to reconstruct an animal from a
+single bone, or tell its size and habits from a tooth is but partially
+correct, and sometimes "the eminent scientist" has come to grief even
+with a great many bones at his disposal. Did not one of the ablest
+anatomists describe and figure the hip-bones of a Dinosaur as its
+shoulder-blade, and another, equally able, reconstruct a reptile "hind
+side before," placing the head on the tail! This certainly sounds absurd
+enough; but just as absurd mistakes are made by men in other walks of
+life, often with far more deplorable results.
+
+Before passing to the restoration of the exterior of animals it may be
+well to say something of the manner in which the skeleton of an extinct
+animal may be reconstructed and the meaning of its various parts
+interpreted. For the adjustment of the muscles is dependent on the
+structure of the skeleton, and putting on the muscles means blocking out
+the form, details of external appearance being supplied by the skin and
+its accessories of hair, scales, or horns. Let us suppose in the present
+instance that we are dealing with one of the great reptiles known as
+Triceratops whose remains are among the treasures of the National Museum
+at Washington, for the reconstruction of the big beast well illustrates
+the methods of the pal�ontologist and also the troubles by which he is
+beset. Moreover, this is not a purely imaginary case, but one that is
+very real, for the skeleton of this animal which was shown at Buffalo
+was restored in papier-mach� in exactly the manner indicated. We have a
+goodly number of bones, but by no means an entire skeleton, and yet we
+wish to complete the skeleton and incidentally to form some idea of the
+creature's habits. Now we can interpret the past only by a knowledge of
+the present, and it is by carefully studying the skeletons of the
+animals of to-day that we can learn to read the meaning of the symbols
+of bones left by the animals of a million yesterdays. Thus we find that
+certain characters distinguish the bone of a mammal from that of a bird,
+a reptile, or a fish, and these in turn from one another, and this
+constitutes the A B C of comparative anatomy. And, in a like manner, the
+bones of the various divisions of these main groups have to a greater or
+less extent their own distinguishing characteristics, so that by first
+comparing the bones of extinct animals with those of creatures that are
+now living we are enabled to recognize their nearest existing relative,
+and then by comparing them with one another we learn the relations they
+bore in the ancient world. But it must be borne in mind that some of the
+early beasts were so very different from those of to-day that until
+pretty much their entire structure was known there was nothing with
+which to compare odd bones. Had but a single incomplete specimen of
+Triceratops come to light we should be very much in the dark concerning
+him; and although remains of some thirty individuals have been
+discovered, these have been so imperfect that we are very far from
+having all the information we need. A great part of the head, with its
+formidable looking horns, is present, and although the nose is gone, we
+know from other specimens that it, too, was armed with a knob, or horn,
+and that the skull ended in a beak, something like that of a snapping
+turtle, though formed by a separate and extra bone; similarly the end of
+the lower jaw is lacking, but we may be pretty certain that it ended in
+a beak, to match that of the skull. The large leg-bones of our specimen
+are mostly represented, for these being among the more solid parts of
+the skeleton are more frequently preserved than any others, and though
+some are from one side and some from another, this matters not. If the
+hind legs were disproportionately long it would indicate that our animal
+often or habitually walked erect, but as there is only difference enough
+between the fore and hind limbs to enable Triceratops to browse
+comfortably from the ground we would naturally place him on all fours,
+even were the skull not so large as to make the creature too top-heavy
+for any other mode of locomotion. Were the limbs very small in
+comparison with the other bones, it would obviously mean that their
+owner passed his life in the water. For a skeleton has a twofold
+meaning, it is the best, the most enduring, testimony we have as to an
+animal's place in nature and the relationships it sustains to the
+creatures that lived with it, before it, and after it. More than this, a
+skeleton is the solution of a problem in mechanics, the problem of
+carrying a given weight and of adaptation to a given mode of life. Thus
+the skeleton varies according as a creature dwells on land, in the
+water, or in the air, and according as it feeds on grass or preys upon
+its fellows.
+
+And so the mechanics of a skeleton afford us a clew to the habits of the
+living animal. Something, too, may be gathered from the structure of the
+leg-bones, for solid bones mean either a sluggish animal or a creature
+of more or less aquatic habits, while hollow bones emphatically declare
+a land animal, and an active one at that; and this, in the case of the
+Dinosaurs, hints at predatory habits, the ability to catch and eat their
+defenceless and more sluggish brethren. A claw, or, better yet, a
+tooth, may confirm or refute this hint; for a blunt claw could not be
+used in tearing prey limb from limb, nor would a double-edged tooth,
+made for rending flesh, serve for champing grass.
+
+But few bones of the feet, and especially the fore feet, are present,
+these smaller parts of the skeleton having been washed away before the
+ponderous frame was buried in the sand, and the best that can be done is
+to follow the law of probabilities and put three toes on the hind foot
+and five on the fore, two of these last without claws. The single blunt
+round claw among our bones shows, as do the teeth, that Triceratops was
+herbivorous; it also pointed a little downward, and this tells that in
+the living animal the sole of the foot was a thick, soft pad, somewhat
+as it is in the elephant and rhinoceros, and that the toes were not
+entirely free from one another. There are less than a dozen vertebr� and
+still fewer ribs, besides half a barrelful of pieces, from which to
+reconstruct a backbone twenty feet long. That the ribs are part from one
+side and part from another matters no more than it did in the case of
+the leg-bones; but the backbone presents a more difficult problem,
+since the pieces are not like so many checkers--all made after one
+pattern--but each has an individuality of its own. The total number of
+vertebr� must be guessed at (perhaps it would sound better to say
+estimated, but it really means the same), and knowing that some sections
+are from the front part of the vertebral column and some from the back,
+we must fill in the gaps as best we may. The ribs offer a little aid in
+this task, giving certain details of the vertebr�, while those in turn
+tell something about the adjoining parts of the ribs. We finish our
+Triceratops with a tail of moderate length, as indicated by the rapid
+taper of the few vertebr� available, and from these we gather, too, that
+in life the tail was round, and not flattened, and that it neither
+served for swimming nor for a balancing pole. And so, little by little,
+have been pieced together the fragments from which we have derived our
+knowledge of the past, and thus has the pal�ontologist read the riddles
+of the rocks.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Triceratops, He of the Three-horned Face. _From
+a statuette by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+To make these dry bones live again, to clothe them with flesh and
+reconstruct the creature as he was or may have been in life, is, to
+be honest, very largely guesswork, though to make a guess that shall
+come anywhere near the mark not only demands a thorough knowledge of
+anatomy--for the basis of all restoration must be the skeleton--but
+calls for more than a passing acquaintance with the external appearance
+of living animals. And while there is nothing in the bones to tell how
+an animal is, or was, clad, they will at least show to what group the
+creature belonged, and, that known, there are certain probabilities in
+the case. A bird, for example, would certainly be clad in feathers.
+Going a little farther, we might be pretty sure that the feathers of a
+water-fowl would be thick and close; those of strictly terrestrial
+birds, such as the ostrich and other flightless forms, lax and long.
+These as general propositions; of course, in special cases, one might
+easily come to grief, as in dealing with birds like penguins, which are
+particularly adapted for an aquatic life, and have the feathers highly
+modified. These birds depend upon their fat, and not on their feathers,
+for warmth, and so their feathers have become a sort of cross between
+scales and hairs. Hair and fur belong to mammals only, although these
+creatures show much variety in their outer covering. The thoroughly
+marine whales have discarded furs and adopted a smooth and slippery
+skin,[9] well adapted to movement through the water, relying for warmth
+on a thick undershirt of blubber. The earless seals that pass much of
+their time on the ice have just enough hair to keep them from absolute
+contact with it, warmth again being provided for by blubber. The fur
+seals, which for several months in the year dwell largely on land, have
+a coat of fur and hair, although warmth is mostly furnished, or rather
+kept in, by fat.
+
+[9] _The reader is warned that this is a mere figure of speech, for, of
+course, the process of adaptation to surroundings is passive, not
+active, although there is a most unfortunate tendency among writers on
+evolution, and particularly on mimicry, to speak of it as active. The
+writer believes that no animal in the first stages of mimicry,
+consciously mimics or endeavors to resemble another animal or any part
+of its surroundings, but a habit at first accidental may in time become
+more or less conscious._
+
+No reptile, therefore, would be covered with feathers, neither, judging
+from those we know to-day, would they be clad in fur or hair; but, such
+coverings being barred out, there remain a great variety of plates and
+scales to choose from. Folds and frills, crests and dewlaps, like
+beauty, are but skin deep, and, being thus superficial, ordinarily leave
+no trace of their former presence, and in respect to them the
+reconstructor must trust to his imagination, with the law of
+probabilities as a check rein to his fancy. This law would tell us that
+such ornaments must not be so placed as to be in the way, and that while
+there would be a possibility--one might even say probability--of the
+great, short-headed, iguana-like Dinosaurs having dewlaps, that there
+would be no great likelihood of their possessing ruffs such as that of
+the Australian Chlamydosaurus (mantled lizard) to flap about their ears.
+Even Stegosaurus, with his bizarre array of great plates and spines,
+kept them on his back, out of the way. Such festal ornamentation would,
+however, more likely be found in small, active creatures, the larger
+beasts contenting themselves with plates and folds.
+
+Spines and plates usually leave some trace of their existence, for they
+consist of a super-structure of skin or horn, built on a foundation of
+bone; and while even horn decomposes too quickly to "petrify," the bone
+will become fossilized and changed into enduring stone. But while this
+affords a pretty sure guide to the general shape of the investing horn,
+it does not give all the details, and there may have been ridges and
+furrows and sculpturing that we know not of.
+
+Knowing, then, what the probabilities are, we have some guide to the
+character of the covering that should be placed on an animal, and if we
+may not be sure as to what should be done, we may be pretty certain what
+should not.
+
+For example, to depict a Dinosaur with smooth, rubbery hide walking
+about on dry land would be to violate the probabilities, for only such
+exclusively aquatic creatures as the whales among mammals, and the
+salamanders among batrachians, are clothed in smooth, shiny skin. There
+might, however, be reason to suspect that a creature largely aquatic in
+its habits did occasionally venture on land, as, for instance, when
+vertebr� that seem illy adapted for carrying the weight of a land animal
+are found in company with huge limb-bones and massive feet we may feel
+reasonably certain that their owner passed at least a portion of his
+time on _terra firma_.
+
+So much for the probabilities as to the covering of animals known to us
+only by their fossil remains; but it is often possible to go beyond
+this, and to state certainly how they were clad. For while the chances
+are small that any trace of the covering of an extinct animal, other
+than bony plates, will be preserved, Nature does now and then seem to
+have relented, and occasionally some animal settled to rest where it was
+so quickly and quietly covered with fine mud that the impression of
+small scales, feathers, or even smooth skin, was preserved; curiously
+enough, there seems to be scarcely any record of the imprint of hair.
+Then, too, it is to be remembered that while the chances were very much
+against such preservation, in the thousands or millions of times
+creatures died the millionth chance might come uppermost.
+
+Silhouettes of those marine reptiles, the Ichthyosaurs, have been found,
+probably made by the slow carbonization of animal matter, showing not
+only the form of the body and tail, but revealing the existence of an
+unsuspected back fin. And yet these animals were apparently clad in a
+skin as thin and smooth as that of a whale. Impressions of feathers were
+known long before the discovery of Arch�opteryx; a few have been found
+in the Green River and Florissant shales of Wyoming, and a Hesperornis
+in the collection of the State University of Kansas shows traces of the
+existence of long, soft feathers on the legs and very clear imprints of
+the scales and reticulated skin that covered the tarsus. From the Chalk
+of Kansas, too, came the example of Tylosaur, showing that the back of
+this animal was decorated with the crest shown in Mr. Knight's
+restoration, one not unlike that of the modern iguana. From the Laramie
+sandstone of Montana Mr. Hatcher and Mr. Butler have obtained the
+impressions of portions of the skin of the great Dinosaur, Thespesius,
+which show that the covering of this animal consisted largely, if not
+entirely, of small, irregularly hexagonal horny scutes, slightly
+thickened in the centre. The quarries of lithographic stone at
+Solenhofen have yielded a few specimens of flying reptiles,
+pterodactyls, which not only verify the correctness of the inference
+that these creatures possessed membranous wings, like the bats, but show
+the exact shape, and it was sometimes very curious, of this membrane.
+And each and all of these wonderfully preserved specimens serve both to
+check and guide the restorer in his task of clothing the animal as it
+was in life.
+
+And all this help is needed, for it is an easy matter to make a
+wide-sweeping deduction, apparently resting on a good basis of fact, and
+yet erroneous. Remains of the Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros, found in
+Siberia and Northern Europe, were thought to indicate that at the period
+when these animals lived the climate was mild, a very natural inference,
+since the elephants and rhinoceroses we now know are all inhabitants of
+tropical climes. But the discovery of more or less complete specimens
+makes it evident that the climate was not particularly mild; the
+animals were simply adapted to it; instead of being naked like their
+modern relatives, they were dressed for the climate in a woolly
+covering. We think of the tiger as prowling through the jungles of
+India, but he ranges so far north that in some localities this beast
+preys upon reindeer, which are among the most northern of large mammals,
+and there the tiger is clad in fairly thick fur.
+
+When we come to coloring a reconstructed animal we have absolutely no
+guide, unless we assume that the larger a creature the more soberly will
+it be colored. The great land animals of to-day, the elephant and
+rhinoceros, to say nothing of the aquatic hippopotamus, are very dully
+colored, and while this sombre coloration is to-day a protection,
+rendering these animals less easily seen by man than they otherwise
+would be, yet at the time this color was developing man was not nor were
+there enemies sufficiently formidable to menace the race of elephantine
+creatures.
+
+For where mere size furnishes sufficient protection one would hardly
+expect to find protective coloration as well, unless indeed a creature
+preyed upon others, when it might be advantageous to enable a predatory
+animal to steal upon its prey.
+
+Color often exists (or is supposed to) as a sexual characteristic, to
+render the male of a species attractive to, or readily recognizable by,
+the female, but in the case of large animals mere size is quite enough
+to render them conspicuous, and possibly this may be one of the factors
+in the dull coloration of large animals.
+
+So while a green and yellow Triceratops would undoubtedly have been a
+conspicuous feature in the Cretaceous landscape, from what we know of
+existing animals it seems best to curb our fancy and, so far as large
+Dinosaurs are concerned, employ the colors of a Rembrandt rather than
+those of a sign painter.
+
+Aids, or at least hints, to the coloration of extinct animals are to be
+found in the coloration of the young of various living species, for as
+the changes undergone by the embryo are in a measure an epitome of the
+changes undergone by a species during its evolution, so the brief color
+phases or markings of the young are considered to represent the
+ordinary coloring of distant ancestors. Young thrushes are spotted,
+young ostriches and grebes are irregularly striped, young lions are
+spotted, and in restoring the early horse, or Hyracothere, Professor
+Osborn had the animal represented as faintly striped, for the reason
+that zebras, the wild horses of to-day, are striped, and because the
+ass, which is a primitive type of horse, is striped over the shoulders,
+these being hints that the earlier horse-like forms were also striped.
+
+Thus just as the skeleton of a Dinosaur may be a composite structure,
+made up of the bones of a dozen individuals, and these in turn mosaics
+of many fragments, so may the semblance of the living animal be based on
+a fact, pieced out with a probability and completed by a bit of theory.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_There is a large series of restorations of extinct animals, prepared by
+Mr. Charles R. Knight, under the direction of Professor Osborn, in the
+Hall of Pal�ontology of the American Museum of Natural History, and
+these are later to be reproduced and issued in portfolio form._
+
+_Should the reader visit Princeton, he may see in the museum there a
+number of B. Waterhouse Hawkins's creations--creations is the proper
+word--which are of interest as examples of the early work in this line._
+
+_The "Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1900" contains an
+article on "The Restoration of Extinct Animals," pages 479-492, which
+includes a number of plates showing the progress that has been made in
+this direction._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 27.--A Hint of Buried Treasures.]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+FEATHERED GIANTS
+
+    _"There were giants in the earth in those days."_
+
+
+Nearly every group of animals has its giants, its species which tower
+above their fellows as Goliath of Gath stood head and shoulders above
+the Philistine hosts; and while some of these are giants only in
+comparison with their fellows, belonging to families whose members are
+short of stature, others are sufficiently great to be called giants
+under any circumstances. Some of these giants live to-day, some have but
+recently passed away, and some ceased to be long ages before man trod
+this earth. The most gigantic of mammals--the whales--still survive, and
+the elephant of to-day suffers but little in comparison with the
+mammoth of yesterday; the monstrous Dinosaurs, greatest of all
+reptiles--greatest, in fact, of all animals that have walked the
+earth--flourished thousands upon thousands of years ago. As for birds,
+some of the giants among them are still living, some existed long
+geologic periods ago, and a few have so recently vanished from the scene
+that their memory still lingers amid the haze of tradition. The best
+known among these, as well as the most recent in point of time, are the
+Moas of New Zealand, first brought to notice by the Rev. W. Colenso,
+later on Bishop of New Zealand, one of the many missionaries to whom
+Science is under obligations. Early in 1838, Bishop Colenso, while on a
+missionary visit to the East Cape region, heard from the natives of
+Waiapu tales of a monstrous bird, called Moa, having the head of a man,
+that inhabited the mountain-side some eighty miles away. This mighty
+bird, the last of his race, was said to be attended by two equally huge
+lizards that kept guard while he slept, and on the approach of man
+wakened the Moa, who immediately rushed upon the intruders and trampled
+them to death. None of the Maoris had seen this bird, but they had seen
+and somewhat irreverently used for making parts of their fishing
+tackle, bones of its extinct relatives, and these bones they declared to
+be as large as those of an ox.
+
+About the same time another missionary, the Rev. Richard Taylor, found a
+bone ascribed to the Moa, and met with a very similar tradition among
+the natives of a near-by district, only, as the foot of the rainbow
+moves away as we move toward it, in his case the bird was said to dwell
+in quite a different locality from that given by the natives of East
+Cape. While, however, the Maoris were certain that the Moa still lived,
+and to doubt its existence was little short of a crime, no one had
+actually seen it, and as time went on and the bird still remained unseen
+by any explorer, hope became doubt and doubt certainty, until it even
+became a mooted question whether such a bird had existed within the past
+ten centuries, to say nothing of having lived within the memory of man.
+
+But if we do not know the living birds, their remains are scattered
+broadcast over hillside and plain, concealed in caves, buried in the mud
+of swamps, and from these we gain a good idea of their size and
+structure, while chance has even made it possible to know something of
+their color and general appearance. This chance was the discovery of a
+few specimens, preserved in exceptionally dry caves on the South Island,
+which not only had some of the bones still united by ligaments, but
+patches of skin clinging to the bones, and bearing numerous feathers of
+a chestnut color tipped with white. These small, straggling, rusty
+feathers are not much to look at, but when we reflect that they have
+been preserved for centuries without any care whatever, while the
+buffalo bugs have devoured our best Smyrna rugs in spite of all possible
+precautions, our respect for them increases.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Relics of the Moa.]
+
+From the bones we learn that there were a great many kinds of Moas,
+twenty at least, ranging in size from those little larger than a turkey
+to that giant among giants, _Dinornis maximus_, which stood at least ten
+feet high,[10] or two feet higher than the largest ostrich, and may
+well claim the distinction of being the tallest of all known birds. We
+also learn from the bones that not only were the Moas flightless, but
+that many of them were absolutely wingless, being devoid even of such
+vestiges of wings as we find in the Cassowary or Apteryx. But if Nature
+deprived these birds of wings, she made ample amends in the matter of
+legs, those of some species, the Elephant-footed Moa, _Pachyornis
+elephantopus_, for example, being so massively built as to cause one to
+wonder what the owner used them for, although the generally accepted
+theory is that they were used for scratching up the roots of ferns on
+which the Moas are believed to have fed. And if a blow from an irate
+ostrich is sufficient to fell a man, what must have been the kicking
+power of an able-bodied Moa? Beside this bird the ostrich would appear
+as slim and graceful as a gazelle beside a prize ox.
+
+[10] _The height of the Moas, and even of some species of �pyornis, is
+often stated to be twelve or fourteen feet, but such a height can only
+be obtained by placing the skeleton in a wholly unnatural attitude._
+
+The Moas were confined to New Zealand, some species inhabiting the North
+Island, some the South, very few being common to both, and from these
+peculiarities of distribution geologists deduce that at some early
+period in the history of the earth the two islands formed one, that
+later on the land subsided, leaving the islands separated by a strait,
+and that since this subsidence there has been sufficient time for the
+development of the species peculiar to each island. Although Moas were
+still numerous when man made his appearance in this part of the world,
+the large deposits of their bones indicate that they were on the wane,
+and that natural causes had already reduced the feathered population of
+these islands. A glacial period is believed to have wrought their
+destruction, and in one great morass, abounding in springs, their bones
+occur in such enormous numbers, layer upon layer, that it is thought the
+birds sought the place where the flowing springs might afford their feet
+at least some respite from the biting cold, and there perished miserably
+by thousands.
+
+What Nature spared man finished, and legends of Moa hunts and Moa feasts
+still lingered among the Maoris when the white man came and began in
+turn the extermination of the Maori. The theory has been advanced, with
+much to support it, that the big birds were eaten off the face of the
+earth by an earlier race than the Maoris, and that after the extirpation
+of the Moas the craving for flesh naturally led to cannibalism. But by
+whomsoever the destruction was wrought, the result was the same, the
+habitat of these feathered giants knew them no longer, while multitudes
+of charred bones, interspersed with fragments of egg-shells, bear
+testimony to former barbaric feasts.
+
+It is a far cry from New Zealand to Madagascar, but thither must we go,
+for that island was, pity we cannot say is, inhabited by a race of giant
+birds from whose eggs it has been thought may have been hatched the Roc
+of Sindbad. Arabian tales, as we all know, locate the Roc either in
+Madagascar or in some adjacent island to the north and east, and it is
+far from unlikely that legends of the �pyornis, backed by the
+substantial proof of its enormous eggs, may have been the slight
+foundation of fact whereon the story-teller erected his structure of
+fiction. True, the Roc of fable was a gigantic bird of prey capable of
+bearing away an elephant in its talons, while the �pyornis has shed its
+wings and shrunk to dimensions little larger than an ostrich, but this
+is the inevitable result of closer acquaintance and the application of a
+two-foot rule.
+
+Like the Moa the �pyornis seems to have lived in tradition long after it
+became extinct, for a French history of Madagascar, published as early
+as 1658 makes mention of a large bird, or kind of ostrich, said to
+inhabit the southern end of the island. Still, in spite of bones having
+been found that bear evident traces of the handiwork of man, it is
+possible that this and other reports were due to the obvious necessity
+of having some bird to account for the presence of the eggs.
+
+The actual introduction of the �pyornis to science took place in 1834,
+when a French traveller sent Jules Verreaux, the ornithologist, a sketch
+of a huge egg, saying that he had seen two of that size, one sawed in
+twain to make bowls, the other, traversed by a stick, serving in the
+preparation of rice uses somewhat in contrast with the proverbial
+fragility of egg-shells. A little later another traveller procured some
+fragments of egg-shells, but it was not until 1851 that any entire eggs
+were obtained, when two were secured, and with a few bones sent to
+France, where Geoffroy St. Hilaire bestowed upon them the name of
+_�pyornis maximus_ (the greatest lofty bird). Maximus the eggs remain,
+for they still hold the record for size; but so far as the bird that is
+supposed to have laid them is concerned, the name was a little
+premature, for other and larger species subsequently came to hand.
+Between the �pyornithes and the Moas Science has had a hard time, for
+the supply of big words was not large enough to go around, and some had
+to do duty twice. In the way of generic names we have Dinornis, terrible
+bird; �pyornis, high bird; Pachyornis, stout bird; and Brontornis,
+thunder bird, while for specific names there are robustus, maximus,
+titan; gravis, heavy; immanis, enormous; crassus, stout; ingens, great;
+and elephantopus, elephant-footed--truly a goodly array of
+large-sounding words. But to return to the big eggs! Usually we look
+upon those of the ostrich as pretty large, but an ostrich egg measures
+4-1/2 by 6 inches, while that of the �pyornis is 9 by 13 inches; or, to
+put it another way, it would hold the contents of six ostrichs' eggs, or
+one hundred and forty-eight hens' eggs, or thirty thousand humming
+birds' eggs; and while this is very much smaller than a waterbutt, it is
+still as large as a bucket, and one or two such eggs might suffice to
+make an omelet for Gargantua himself.
+
+The size of an egg is no safe criterion of the size of the bird that
+laid it, for a large bird may lay a small egg, or a small bird a large
+one. Comparing the egg of the great Moa with that of our �pyornis one
+might think the latter much the larger bird, say twelve feet in height,
+when the facts in the case are that while there was no great difference
+in the weight of the two, that difference, and a superiority of at least
+two feet in height, are in favor of the bird that laid the smaller egg.
+The record of large eggs, however, belongs to the Apteryx, a New Zealand
+bird smaller than a hen, though distantly related to the Moas, which
+lays an egg about one-third of its own weight, measuring 3 by 5 inches;
+perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the bird lays but two.
+
+Although most of the eggs of these big birds that have been found have
+literally been unearthed from the muck of swamps, now and then one comes
+to light in a more interesting manner as, for example, when a perfect
+egg of �pyornis was found afloat after a hurricane, bobbing serenely up
+and down with the waves near St. Augustine's Bay, or when an egg of the
+Moa was exhumed from an ancient Maori grave, where for years it had lain
+unharmed, safely clasped between the skeleton fingers of the occupant.
+So far very few of these huge eggs have made their way to this country,
+and the only egg of �pyornis now on this side of the water is the
+property of a private individual.
+
+Most recent in point of discovery, but oldest in point of time, are the
+giant birds from Patagonia, which are burdened with the name of
+Phororhacid�, a name that originated in an error, although the error may
+well be excused. The first fragment of one of these great birds to come
+to light was a portion of the lower jaw, and this was so massive, so
+un-bird-like, that the finder dubbed it _Phororhacos_, and so it must
+remain.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Eggs of Feathered Giants, �pyornis, Ostrich,
+Moa, Compared with a Hen's Egg.]
+
+It is a pity that all the large names were used up before this group of
+birds was discovered, and it is particularly unfortunate that Dinornis,
+terrible bird, was applied to the root-eating Moas, for these Patagonian
+birds, with their massive limbs, huge heads and hooked beaks, were truly
+worthy of such a name; and although in nowise related to the eagles,
+they may in habit have been terrestrial birds of prey. Not all the
+members of this family are giants, for as in other groups, some are big
+and some little, but the largest among them might be styled the Daniel
+Lambert of the feathered race. _Brontornis_, for example, the thunder
+bird, or as the irreverent translate it, the thundering big bird, had
+leg-bones larger than those of an ox, the drumstick measuring 30 inches
+in length by 2-1/2 inches in diameter, or 4-1/4 inches across the ends,
+while the tarsus, or lower bone of the leg to which the toes are
+attached, was 16-1/2 inches long and 5-1/2 inches wide where the toes
+join on. Bear this in mind the next time you see a large turkey, or
+compare these bones with those of an ostrich: but lest you may forget,
+it may be said that the same bone of a fourteen-pound turkey is 5-1/2
+inches long, and one inch wide at either end, while that of an ostrich
+measures 19 inches long and 2 inches across the toes, or 3 at the upper
+end.
+
+If Brontornis was a heavy-limbed bird, he was not without near rivals
+among the Moas, while the great Phororhacos, one of his contemporaries,
+was not only nearly as large, but quite unique in build. Imagine a bird
+seven or eight feet in height from the sole of his big, sharp-clawed
+feet, to the top of his huge head, poise this head on a neck as thick as
+that of a horse, arm it with a beak as sharp as an icepick and almost as
+formidable, and you have a fair idea of this feathered giant of the
+ancient pampas. The head indeed was truly colossal for that of a bird,
+measuring 23 inches in length by 7 in depth, while that of the racehorse
+Lexington, and he was a good-sized horse, measures 22 inches long by
+5-1/2 inches deep. The depth of the jaw is omitted because we wish to
+make as good a case as possible for the bird, and the jaw of a horse is
+so deep as to give him an undue advantage in that respect.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Skull of Phororhacos Compared with that of the
+Race-horse Lexington.]
+
+We can only speculate on the food of these great birds, and for aught we
+know to the contrary they may have caught fish, fed upon carrion, or
+used their powerful feet and huge beaks for grubbing roots; but if they
+were not more or less carnivorous, preying upon such reptiles, mammals
+and other birds as came within reach, then nature apparently made a
+mistake in giving them such a formidable equipment of beak and claw. So
+far as habits go we might be justified in calling them cursorial birds
+of prey.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 31.--Leg of a Horse Compared with that of the Giant
+Moa.]
+
+We really know very little about these Patagonian giants, but they are
+interesting not only from their great size and astounding skulls, but
+because of the early age (Miocene) at which they lived and because in
+spite of their bulk they are in nowise related to the ostriches, but
+belong near the heron family. As usual, we have no idea why they became
+extinct, but in this instance man is guiltless, for they lived and died
+long before he made his appearance, and the ever-convenient hypothesis
+"change of climate" may be responsible for their disappearance.
+
+Something, perhaps, remains to be said concerning the causes which seem
+to have led to the development of these giant birds, as well as the
+reasons for their flightless condition and peculiar distribution, for it
+will be noticed that, with the exception of the African and South
+American ostriches the great flightless birds as a rule are, and were,
+confined to uninhabited or sparsely populated islands, and this is
+equally true of the many small, but equally flightless birds. It is a
+seemingly harsh law of nature that all living beings shall live in a
+more or less active struggle with each other and with their
+surroundings, and that those creatures which possess some slight
+advantage over their fellows in the matter of speed, or strength, or
+ability to adapt themselves to surrounding conditions, shall prosper at
+the expense of the others. In the power of flight, birds have a great
+safeguard against changes of climate with their accompanying variations
+in the supply of food, and, to a lesser extent, against their various
+enemies, including man. This power of flight, acquired early in their
+geological history, has enabled birds to spread over the length and
+breadth of the globe as no other group of animals has done, and to
+thrive under the most varying conditions, and it would seem that if this
+power were lost it must sooner or later work harm. Now to-day we find no
+great wingless birds in thickly populated regions, or where beasts of
+prey abound; the ostriches roam the desert wastes of Arabia, Africa and
+South America where men are few and savage beasts scarce, and against
+these is placed a fleetness of foot inherited from ancestors who
+acquired it before man was. The heavy cassowaries dwell in the thinly
+inhabited, thickly wooded islands of Malaysia, where again there are no
+large carnivores and where the dense vegetation is some safeguard
+against man; the emu comes from the Australian plains, where also there
+are no four-footed enemies[11] and where his ancestors dwelt in peace
+before the advent of man. And the same things are true of the Moas, the
+�pyornithes, the flightless birds of Patagonia, the recent dodo of
+Mauritius and the solitaire of Rodriguez, each and all of which
+flourished in places where there were no men and practically no other
+enemies. Hence we deduce that absence of enemies is the prime factor in
+the existence of flightless birds,[12] although presence of food is an
+essential, while isolation, or restriction to a limited area, plays an
+important part by keeping together those birds, or that race of birds,
+whose members show a tendency to disuse their wings. It will be seen
+that such combinations of circumstances will most naturally be found on
+islands whose geological history is such that they have had no
+connection with adjacent continents, or such a very ancient connection
+that they were not then peopled with beasts of prey, while subsequently
+their distance from other countries has prevented them from receiving
+such population by accident in recent times and has also retarded the
+arrival of man.
+
+[11] _The dingo, or native dog, is not forgotten, but, like man, it is a
+comparatively recent animal._
+
+[12] _Note that in Tasmania, which is very near Australia, both in space
+and in the character of its animals, there are two carnivorous mammals,
+the Tasmanian "Wolf" and the Tasmanian Devil, and no flightless birds._
+
+Once established, flightlessness and size play into one another's hands;
+the flightless bird has no limit placed on its size[13] while granted a
+food supply and immunity from man; the larger the bird the less the
+necessity for wings to escape from four-footed foes. So long as the
+climate was favorable and man absent, the big, clumsy bird might thrive,
+but upon the coming of man, or in the face of any unfavorable change of
+climate, he would be at a serious disadvantage and hence whenever either
+of these two factors has been brought to bear against them the feathered
+giants have vanished.
+
+[13] _While we do not know the limit of size to a flying creature, none
+has as yet been found whose wings would spread over twenty feet from tip
+to tip, and it is evident that wings larger than this would demand great
+strength for their manipulation._
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_There is a fine collection of mounted skeletons of various species of
+Moas in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Mass., and
+another in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. A few
+_other skeletons and numerous bones are to be found in other
+institutions, but the author is not aware of any egg being in this
+country. Specimens of the �pyornis are rare in this country, but Mr.
+Robert Gilfort, of Orange, N.J., is the possessor of a very fine egg. A
+number of eggs have been sold in London, the prices ranging from �200
+down to �42, this last being much less than prices paid for eggs of the
+great auk. But then, the great auk is somewhat of a fad, and there are
+just enough eggs in existence to bring one into the market every little
+while. Besides, the number of eggs of the great auk is a fixed quantity,
+while no one knows how many more of �pyornis remain to be discovered in
+the swamps of Madagascar. No specimens of the gigantic Patagonian birds
+are now in this country, but a fine example of one of the smaller forms,
+Pelycornis, including the only breast-bone yet found, is in the Museum
+of Princeton University._
+
+_The largest known tibia of a Moa, the longest bird-bone known, is in
+the collection of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand; it
+is 3 feet 3 inches long. This, however, is exceptional, the measurements
+of the leg-bones of an ordinary Dinornis maximus being as follows:
+Femur, 18 inches; tibia, 32 inches; tarsus, 19 inches, a total of 5 feet
+9 inches. The egg measures 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches._
+
+_There is plenty of literature, and very interesting literature,
+about the Moas, but, unfortunately, the best of it is not always
+accessible, being contained in the "New Zealand Journal of Science" and
+the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute." The volume of
+"Transactions" for 1893, being vol. xxvi., contains a very full list of
+articles relating to the Moas, compiled by Mr. A. Hamilton; it will be
+found to commence on page 229. There is a good article on Moa in
+Newton's "Dictionary of Birds," a book that should be in every library._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 32.--The Three Giants, Phororhacos, Moa, Ostrich.]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE
+
+    "_Said the little Eohippus
+      I am going to be a horse
+    And on my middle finger-nails
+      To run my earthly course._"
+
+
+The American whose ancestors came over in the "Mayflower" has a proper
+pride in the length of the line of his descent. The Englishman whose
+genealogical tree sprang up at the time of William the Conqueror has, in
+its eight centuries of growth, still larger occasion for pluming himself
+on the antiquity of his family. But the pedigree of even the latter is a
+thing of yesterday when compared with that of the horse, whose family
+records, according to Professor Osborn, reach backward for something
+like 2,000,000 years. And if, as we have been told, "it is a good thing
+to have ancestors, but sometimes a little hard on the ancestor," in
+this instance at least the founders of the family have every reason to
+regard their descendants with undisguised pride. For the horse family
+started in life in a small way, and the first of the line, the
+Hyracotherium, was "a little animal no bigger than a fox, and on
+five[14] toes he scampered over Tertiary rocks," in the age called
+Eocene, because it was the morning of life for the great group of
+mammals whose culminating point was man. At that time, western North
+America was a country of many lakes, for the most part comparatively
+shallow, around the reedy margins of which moved a host of animals,
+quite unlike those of to-day, and yet foreshadowing them, the
+forerunners of the rhinoceros, tapir, and the horse.
+
+[14] _Four, to be exact; but we prefer to sacrifice the foot of the
+Hyracothere rather than to take liberties with one of the feet of Mrs.
+Stetson's poem._
+
+The early horse--we may call him so by courtesy, although he was then
+very far from being a true horse--was an insignificant little creature,
+apparently far less likely to succeed in life's race than his bulky
+competitors, and yet, by making the most of their opportunities, his
+descendants have survived, while most of theirs have dropped by the
+wayside; and finally, by the aid of man, the horse has become spread
+over the length and breadth of the habitable globe.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 33.--Skeleton of the Modern Horse and of His Eocene
+Ancestor.]
+
+Now right here it may be asked, How do we know that the little
+Hyracothere _was_ the progenitor of the horse, and how can it be shown
+that there is any bond of kinship between him and, for example, the
+great French Percheron? There is only one way in which we can obtain
+this knowledge, and but one method by which the relationship can be
+shown, and that is by collecting the fossil remains of animals long
+extinct and comparing them with the bones of the recent horse, a branch
+of science known as Pal�ontology. It has taken a very long time to
+gather the necessary evidence, and it has taken a vast amount of hard
+work in our western Territories, for "the country that is as hot as
+Hades, watered by stagnant alkali pools, is almost invariably the
+richest in fossils." Likewise it has called for the expenditure of much
+time and more patience to put together some of this petrified evidence,
+fragmentary in every sense of the word, and get it into such shape that
+it could be handled by the anatomist. Still, the work has been done,
+and, link by link, the chain has been constructed that unites the horse
+of to-day with the horse of very many yesterdays.
+
+The very first links in this chain are the remains of the bronze age
+and those found among the ruins of the ancient Swiss lake dwellings; but
+earlier still than these are the bones of horses found abundantly in
+northern Europe, Asia, and America. The individual bones and teeth of
+some of these horses are scarcely distinguishable from those of to-day,
+a fact noted in the name, _Equus fraternus_, applied to one species; and
+when teeth alone are found, it is at times practically impossible to say
+whether they belong to a fossil horse or to a modern animal. But when
+enough scattered bones are gathered to make a fairly complete skeleton,
+it becomes evident that the fossil horse had a proportionately larger
+head and smaller feet than his existing relative, and that he was a
+little more like an ass or zebra, for the latter, spite of his gay coat,
+is a near relative of the lowly ass. Moreover, primitive man made
+sketches of the primitive horse, just as he did of the mammoth, and
+these indicate that the horse of those days was something like an
+overgrown Shetland pony, low and heavily built, large-headed and
+rough-coated. For the old cave-dwellers of Europe were intimately
+acquainted with the prehistoric horses, using them for food, as they
+did almost every animal that fell beneath their flint arrows and stone
+axes. And if one may judge from the abundance of bones, the horses must
+have roamed about in bands, just as the horses escaped from civilization
+roam, or have roamed, over the pampas of South America and the prairies
+of the West.
+
+The horse was just as abundant in North America in Pleistocene time as
+in Europe; but there is no evidence to show that it was contemporary
+with early man in North America, and, even were this the case, it is
+generally believed that long before the discovery of America the horse
+had disappeared. And yet, so plentiful and so fresh are his remains, and
+so much like those of the mustang, that the late Professor Cope was wont
+to say that it almost seemed as if the horse _might_ have lingered in
+Texas until the coming of the white man. And Sir William Flower wrote:
+"There is a possibility of the animal having still existed, in a wild
+state, in some parts of the continent remote from that which was first
+visited by the Spaniards, where they were certainly unknown. It has
+been suggested that the horses which were found by Cabot in La Plata in
+1530 cannot have been introduced."
+
+Still we have not the least little bit of positive proof that such was
+the case, and although the site of many an ancient Indian village has
+been carefully explored, no bones of the horse have come to light, or if
+they have been found, bones of the ox or sheep were also present to tell
+that the village was occupied long after the advent of the whites. It is
+also a curious fact that within historic times there have been no wild
+horses, in the true sense of the word, unless indeed those found on the
+steppes north of the Sea of Azof be wild, and this is very doubtful. But
+long before the dawn of history the horse was domesticated in Europe,
+and C�sar found the Germans, and even the old Britons, using war
+chariots drawn by horses--for the first use man seems to have made of
+the horse was to aid him in killing off his fellow-man, and not until
+comparatively modern times was the animal employed in the peaceful arts
+of agriculture. The immediate predecessors of these horses were
+considerably smaller, being about the size and build of a pony, but
+they were very much like a horse in structure, save that the teeth were
+shorter. As they lived during Pliocene times, they have been named
+"Pliohippus."
+
+Going back into the past a step farther, though a pretty long step if we
+reckon by years, we come upon a number of animals very much like horses,
+save for certain cranial peculiarities and the fact that they had three
+toes on each foot, while the horse, as every one knows, has but one toe.
+Now, if we glance at the skeleton of a horse, we will see on either side
+of the canon-bone, in the same situation as the upper part of the little
+toes of the Hippotherium, as these three-toed horses are called, a long
+slender bone, termed by veterinarians the splint bone; and it requires
+no anatomical training to see that the bones in the two animals are the
+same. The horse lacks the lower part of his side toes, that is all, just
+as man will very probably some day lack the last bones of his little
+toe. We find an approach to this condition in some of the Hippotheres
+even, known as Protohippus, in which the side toes are quite small,
+foreshadowing the time when they shall have disappeared entirely. It may
+also be noted here that the splint bones of the horses of the bronze age
+are a little longer than those of existing horses, and that they are
+never united with the large central toe, while nowadays there is
+something of a tendency for the three bones to fuse into one, although
+part of this tendency the writer believes to be due to inflammation set
+up by the strain of the pulling and hauling the animal is now called
+upon to do. Some of these three-toed Hippotheres are not in the direct
+line of ancestry of the horse, but are side branches on the family tree,
+having become so highly specialized in certain directions that no
+further progress horseward was possible.
+
+Backward still, and the bones we find in the Miocene strata of the West,
+belonging to those ancestors of the horse to which the name of
+Mesohippus has been given because they are midway in time and structure
+between the horse of the past and present, tell us that then all horses
+were small and that all had three toes on a foot, while the fore feet
+bore even the suggestion of a fourth toe. From this to our Eocene
+Hyracothere with four toes is only another long-time step. We may go
+even beyond this in time and structure, and carry back the line of the
+horse to animals which only remotely resembled him and had five good
+toes to a foot; but while these contained the possibility of a horse,
+they made no show of it.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 34.--The Development of the Horse.]
+
+Increase in size and decrease in number of the toes were not the only
+changes that were required to transform the progeny of the Hyracothere
+into a horse. These are the most evident; but the increased complexity
+in the structure of the teeth was quite as important. The teeth of
+gnawing animals have often been compared to a chisel which is made of a
+steel plate with soft iron backing, and the teeth of a horse, or of
+other grass-eating animals, are simply an elaboration of this idea. The
+hard enamel, which represents the steel, is set in soft dentine, which
+represents the iron, and in use the dentine wears away the faster of the
+two, so that the enamel stands up in ridges, each tooth becoming, as it
+is correctly termed, "a grinder." In a horse the plates of enamel form
+curved, complex, irregular patterns; but as we go back in time, the
+patterns become less and less elaborate, until in the Hyracothere,
+standing at the foot of the family tree, the teeth are very simple in
+structure. Moreover, his teeth were of limited growth, while those of
+the horse grow for a considerable time, thus compensating for the wear
+to which they are subjected.
+
+We have, then, this direct evidence as to the genealogy of the horse,
+that between the little Eocene Hyracothere and the modern horse we can
+place a series of animals by which we can pass by gradual stages from
+one to the other, and that as we come upward there is an increase in
+stature, in the complexity of the teeth, and in the size of the brain.
+At the same time, the number of toes decreases, which tells that the
+animals were developing more and more speed; for it is a rule that the
+fewer the toes the faster the animal: the fastest of birds, the ostrich,
+has but two toes, and one of these is mostly ornamental; and the fastest
+of mammals, the horse, has but one.
+
+All breeders of fancy stock, particularly of pigeons and poultry,
+recognize the tendency of animals to revert to the forms whence they
+were derived and reproduce some character of a distant ancestor; to
+"throw back," as the breeders term it. If now, instead of reproducing a
+trait or feature possessed by some ancestor a score, a hundred, or
+perhaps a thousand years ago, there should reappear a characteristic of
+some ancestor that flourished 100,000 years back, we should have a
+seeming abnormality, but really a case of reversion; and the more we
+become acquainted with the structure of extinct animals and the
+development of those now living, the better able are we to explain these
+apparent abnormalities.
+
+Bearing in mind that the two splint bones of the horse correspond to the
+upper portions of the side toes of the Hippotherium and Mesohippus, it
+is easy to see that if for any reason these should develop into toes,
+they would make the foot of a modern horse appear like that of his
+distant ancestor. While such a thing rarely happens, yet now and then
+nature apparently does attempt to reproduce a horse's foot after the
+ancient pattern, for occasionally we meet with a horse having, instead
+of the single toe with which the average horse is satisfied, one or
+possibly two extra toes. Sometimes the toe is extra in every sense of
+the word, being a mere duplication of the central toe; but sometimes it
+is an actual development of one of the splint bones. No less a personage
+than Julius C�sar possessed one of these polydactyl horses, and the
+reporters of the _Daily Roman_ and the _Tiberian Gazette_ doubtless
+wrote it up in good journalistic Latin, for we find the horse described
+as having feet that were almost human, and as being looked upon with
+great awe. While this is the most celebrated of extra-toed horses, other
+and more plebeian individuals have been much more widely known through
+having been exhibited throughout the country under such titles as
+"Clique, the horse with six feet," "the eight-footed Cuban horse," and
+so on; and possibly some of these are familiar to readers of this page.
+
+So the collateral evidence, though scanty, bears out the circumstantial
+proof, derived from fossil bones, that the horse has developed from a
+many-toed ancestor; and the evidence points toward the little
+Hyracothere as being that ancestor. It remains only to show some good
+reason why this development should have taken place, or to indicate the
+forces by which it was brought about. We have heard much about "the
+survival of the fittest," a phrase which simply means that those animals
+best adapted to their surroundings will survive, while those ill adapted
+will perish. But it should be added that it means also that the animals
+must be able to adapt themselves to changes in their environment, or to
+change with it. Living beings cannot stand still indefinitely; they must
+progress or perish. And this seems to have been the cause for the
+extinction of the huge quadrupeds that flourished at the time of the
+three-toed Miocene horse. They were adapted to their environment as it
+was; but when the western mountains were thrust upward, cutting off the
+moist winds from the Pacific, making great changes in the rainfall and
+climate to the eastward of the Rocky Mountains, these big beasts, slow
+of foot and dull of brain, could not keep pace with the change, and
+their race vanished from the face of the earth. The day of the little
+Hyracothere was at the beginning of the great series of changes by which
+the lake country of the West, with its marshy flats and rank vegetation,
+became transformed into dry uplands sparsely clad with fine grasses. On
+these dry plains the more nimble-footed animals would have the advantage
+in the struggle for existence; and while the four-toed foot would keep
+its owner from sinking in soft ground, he was handicapped when it became
+a question of speed, for not only is a fleet animal better able to flee
+from danger than his slower fellows, but in time of drouth he can cover
+the greater extent of territory in search of food or water. So, too, as
+the rank rushes gave place to fine grasses, often browned and withered
+beneath the summer's sun, the complex tooth had an advantage over that
+of simpler structure, while the cutting-teeth, so completely developed
+in the horse family, enabled their possessors to crop the grass as
+closely as one could do it with scissors. Likewise, up to a certain
+point, the largest, most powerful animal will not only conquer, or
+escape from, his enemies, but prevail over rivals of his own kind as
+well, and thus it came to pass that those early members of the horse
+family who were pre�minent in speed and stature, and harmonized best
+with their surroundings, outstripped their fellows and transmitted these
+qualities to their progeny, until, as a result of long ages of natural
+selection, there was developed the modern horse. The rest man has done:
+the heavy, slow-paced dray horse, the fleet trotter, the huge Percheron,
+and the diminutive pony are one and all the recent products of
+artificial selection.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The best collection of fossil horses, and one specially arranged to
+illustrate the line of descent of the modern horse, is to be found in
+the American Museum of Natural History, New York, but some good
+specimens, of particular interest because they were described by
+Professor Marsh and studied by Huxley are in the Yale University Museum.
+They are referred to in Huxley's "American Addresses; Lectures on
+Evolution." "The Horse," by Sir W. H. Flower, discusses the horse in a
+popular manner from various points of view and contains numerous
+references to books and articles on the subject from which anyone
+wishing for further information could obtain it._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 35.--The Mammoth. _From a drawing by Charles R.
+Knight._]
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE MAMMOTH
+
+    "_His legs were as thick as the bole of the beech,
+      His tusks as the buttonwood white,
+    While his lithe trunk wound like a sapling around
+      An oak in the whirlwind's might._"
+
+     _In the October number of McClure's Magazine for 1899 was
+     published a short story, "The Killing of the Mammoth," by "H.
+     Tukeman," which, to the amazement of the editors, was taken by
+     many readers not as fiction, but as a contribution to natural
+     history. Immediately after the appearance of that number of the
+     magazine, the authorities of the Smithsonian Institution, in
+     which the author had located the remains of the beast of his
+     fancy, were beset with visitors to see the stuffed mammoth, and
+     the daily mail of the Magazine, as well as that of the
+     Smithsonian Institution, was filled with inquiries for more
+     information and for requests to settle wagers as to whether it
+     was a true story or not. The contribution in question was
+     printed purely as fiction, with no idea of misleading the
+     public, and was entitled a story in the table of contents. We
+     doubt if any writer of realistic fiction ever had a more
+     general and convincing proof of success._
+
+
+About three centuries ago, in 1696, a Russian, one Ludloff by name,
+described some bones belonging to what the Tartars called "Mamantu";
+later on, Blumenbach pressed the common name into scientific use as
+"Mammut," and Cuvier gallicized this into "Mammouth," whence by an easy
+transition we get our familiar mammoth. We are so accustomed to use the
+word to describe anything of remarkable size that it would be only
+natural to suppose that the name Mammoth was given to the extinct
+elephant because of its extraordinary bulk. Exactly the reverse of this
+is true, however, for the word came to have its present meaning because
+the original possessor of the name was a huge animal. The Siberian
+peasants called the creature "Mamantu," or "ground-dweller," because
+they believed it to be a gigantic mole, passing its life beneath the
+ground and perishing when by any accident it saw the light. The
+reasoning that led to this belief was very simple and the logic very
+good; no one had ever seen a live Mamantu, but there were plenty of its
+bones lying at or near the surface; consequently if the animal did not
+live above the ground, it must dwell below.
+
+To-day, nearly every one knows that the mammoth was a sort of big,
+hairy elephant, now extinct, and nearly every one has a general idea
+that it lived in the North. There is some uncertainty as to whether the
+mammoth was a mastodon, or the mastodon a mammoth, and there is a great
+deal of misconception as to the size and abundance of this big beast. It
+may be said in passing that the mastodon is only a second or third
+cousin of the mammoth, but that the existing elephant of Asia is a very
+near relative, certainly as near as a first cousin, possibly a very
+great grandson. Popularly, the mammoth is supposed to have been a
+colossus somewhere from twelve to twenty feet in height, beside whom
+modern elephants would seem insignificant; but as "trout lose much in
+dressing," so mammoths shrink in measuring, and while there were
+doubtless Jumbos among them in the way of individuals of exceptional
+magnitude, the majority were decidedly under Jumbo's size. The only
+mounted mammoth skeleton in this country, that in the Chicago Academy of
+Sciences, is one of the largest, the thigh-bone measuring five feet one
+inch in length, or a foot more than that of Jumbo; and as Jumbo stood
+eleven feet high, the rule of three applied to this thigh-bone would
+give the living animal a height of thirteen feet eight inches. The
+height of this specimen is given as thirteen feet in its bones, with an
+estimate of fourteen feet in its clothes; but as the skeleton is
+obviously mounted altogether too high, it is pretty safe to say that
+thirteen feet is a good, fair allowance for the height of this animal
+when alive. As for the majority of mammoths, they would not average more
+than nine or ten feet high. Sir Samuel Baker tells us that he has seen
+plenty of wild African elephants that would exceed Jumbo by a foot or
+more, and while this must be accepted with caution, since unfortunately
+he neglected to put a tape-line on them, yet Mr. Thomas Baines did
+measure a specimen twelve feet high. This, coupled with Sir Samuel's
+statement, indicates that there is not so much difference between the
+mammoth and the elephant as there might be. This applies to the mammoth
+_par excellence_, the species known scientifically as _Elephas
+primigenius_, whose remains are found in many parts of the Northern
+Hemisphere and occur abundantly in Siberia and Alaska. There were other
+elephants than the mammoth, and some that exceeded him in size, notably
+_Elephas meridionalis_ of southern Europe, and _Elephas columbi_ of our
+Southern and Western States, but even the largest cannot positively be
+asserted to have exceeded a height of thirteen feet. Tusks offer
+convenient terms of comparison, and those of an average fully grown
+mammoth are from eight to ten feet in length; those of the famous St.
+Petersburg specimen and those of the huge specimen in Chicago measuring
+respectively nine feet three inches, and nine feet eight inches. So far
+as the writer is aware, the largest tusks actually measured are two from
+Alaska, one twelve feet ten inches long, weighing 190 pounds, reported
+by Mr. Jay Beach; and another eleven feet long, weighing 200 pounds,
+noted by Mr. T. L. Brevig. Compared with these we have the big tusk that
+used to stand on Fulton Street, New York, just an inch under nine feet
+long, and weighing 184 pounds, or the largest shown at Chicago in 1893,
+which was seven feet six inches long, and weighed 176 pounds. The
+largest, most beautiful tusks, probably, ever seen in this country were
+a pair brought from Zanzibar and displayed by Messrs. Tiffany & Company
+in 1900. The measurements and weights of these were as follows: length
+along outer curve, ten feet and three-fourths of an inch, circumference
+one foot, eleven inches, weight, 224 pounds; length along outer curve,
+ten feet, three and one-half inches, circumference two feet and
+one-fourth of an inch, weight, 239 pounds.
+
+For our knowledge of the external appearance of the mammoth we are
+indebted to the more or less entire examples which have been found at
+various times in Siberia, but mainly to the noted specimen found in 1799
+near the Lena, embedded in the ice, where it had been reposing, so
+geologists tell us, anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 years. How the
+creature gradually thawed out of its icy tomb, and the tusks were taken
+by the discoverer and sold for ivory; how the dogs fed upon the flesh in
+summer, while bears and wolves feasted upon it in winter; how the animal
+was within an ace of being utterly lost to science when, at the last
+moment, the mutilated remains were rescued by Mr. Adams, is an old
+story, often told and retold. Suffice it to say that, besides the bones,
+enough of the beast was preserved to tell us exactly what was the
+covering of this ancient elephant, and to show that it was a creature
+adapted to withstand the northern cold and fitted for living on the
+branches of the birch and hemlock.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Skeleton of the Mammoth in the Royal Museum of
+St. Petersburg.]
+
+The exact birthplace of the mammoth is as uncertain as that of many
+other great characters; but his earliest known resting-place is in the
+Cromer Forest Beds of England, a country inhabited by him at a time when
+the German Ocean was dry land and Great Britain part of a peninsula.
+Here his remains are found to-day, while from the depths of the North
+Sea the hardy trawlers have dredged hundreds, aye thousands, of mammoth
+teeth in company with soles and turbot. If, then, the mammoth originated
+in western Europe, and not in that great graveyard of fossil elephants,
+northern India, eastward he went spreading over all Europe north of the
+Pyrenees and Alps, save only Scandinavia, whose glaciers offered no
+attractions, scattering his bones abundantly by the wayside to serve as
+marvels for future ages. Strange indeed have been some of the tales to
+which these and other elephantine remains have given rise when they came
+to light in the good old days when knowledge of anatomy was small and
+credulity was great. The least absurd theory concerning them was that
+they were the bones of the elephants which Hannibal brought from Africa.
+Occasionally they were brought forward as irrefutable evidences of the
+deluge; but usually they figured as the bones of giants, the most famous
+of them being known as Teutobochus, King of the Cimbri, a lusty warrior
+said to have had a height of nineteen feet. Somewhat smaller, but still
+of respectable height, fourteen feet, was "Littell Johne" of Scotland,
+whereof Hector Boece wrote, concluding, in a moralizing tone, "Be quilk
+(which) it appears how extravegant and squaire pepill grew in oure
+regioun afore they were effeminat with lust and intemperance of mouth."
+More than this, these bones have been venerated in Greece and Rome as
+the remains of pagan heroes, and later on worshipped as relics of
+Christian saints. Did not the church of Valencia possess an elephant
+tooth which did duty as that of St. Christopher, and, so late as 1789,
+was not a thigh-bone, figuring as the arm-bone of a saint, carried in
+procession through the streets in order to bring rain?
+
+Out of Europe eastward into Asia the mammoth took his way, and having
+peopled that vast region, took advantage of a land connection then
+existing between Asia and North America and walked over into Alaska, in
+company with the forerunners of the bison and the ancestors of the
+mountain sheep and Alaskan brown bear. Still eastward and southward he
+went, until he came to the Atlantic coast, the latitude of southern New
+York roughly marking the southern boundary of the broad domain over
+which the mammoth roamed undisturbed.[15] Not that of necessity all this
+vast area was occupied at one time; but this was the range of the
+mammoth during Pleistocene time, for over all this region his bones and
+teeth are found in greater or less abundance and in varying conditions
+of preservation. In regions like parts of Siberia and Alaska, where the
+bones are entombed in a wet and cold, often icy, soil, the bones and
+tusks are almost as perfectly preserved as though they had been
+deposited but a score of years ago, while remains so situated that they
+have been subjected to varying conditions of dryness and moisture are
+always in a fragmentary state. As previously noted, several more or less
+entire carcasses of the mammoth have been discovered in Siberia, only to
+be lost; and, while no entire animal has so far been found in Alaska,
+some day one may yet come to light. That there is some possibility of
+this is shown by the discovery, recorded by Mr. Dall, of the partial
+skeleton of a mammoth in the bank of the Yukon with some of the fat
+still present, and although this had been partially converted into
+adipocere, it was fresh enough to be used by the natives for greasing,
+not their boots, but their boats. And up to the present time this is the
+nearest approach to finding a live mammoth in Alaska.
+
+[15] _This must be taken as a very general statement, as the distinction
+between and habitats of Elephas primigenius and Elephas columbi, the
+southern mammoth, are not satisfactorily determined; moreover, the two
+species overlap through a wide area of the West and Northwest._
+
+As to why the mammoth became extinct, we _know_ absolutely nothing,
+although various theories, some much more ingenious than plausible,
+have been advanced to account for their extermination--they perished of
+starvation; they were overtaken by floods on their supposed migrations
+and drowned in detachments; they fell through the ice, equally in
+detachments, and were swept out to sea. But all we can safely say is
+that long ages ago the last one perished off the face of the earth.
+Strange it is, too, that these mighty beasts, whose bulk was ample to
+protect them against four-footed foes, and whose woolly coat was proof
+against the cold, should have utterly vanished. They ranged from England
+eastward to New York, almost around the world; from the Alps to the
+Arctic Ocean; and in such numbers that to-day their tusks are articles
+of commerce, and fossil ivory has its price current as well as wheat.
+Mr. Boyd Dawkins thinks that the mammoth was actually exterminated by
+early man, but, even granting that this might be true for southern and
+western Europe, it could not be true of the herds that inhabited the
+wastes of Siberia, or of the thousands that flourished in Alaska and the
+western United States. So far as man is concerned, the mammoth might
+still be living in these localities, where, before the discovery of gold
+drew thousands of miners to Alaska, there were vast stretches of
+wilderness wholly untrodden by the foot of man. Neither could this
+theory account for the disappearance of the mastodon from North America,
+where that animal covered so vast a stretch of territory that man,
+unaided by nature, could have made little impression on its numbers.
+That many were swept out to sea by the flooded rivers of Siberia is
+certain, for some of the low islands off the coast are said to be formed
+of sand, ice, and bones of the mammoth, and thence, for hundreds of
+years, have come the tusks which are sold in the market beside those of
+the African and Indian elephants.
+
+That man was contemporary with the mammoth in southern Europe is fairly
+certain, for not only are the remains of the mammoth and man's flint
+weapons found together, but in a few instances some primeval Landseer
+graved on slate, ivory, or reindeer antler a sketchy outline of the
+beast, somewhat impressionistic perhaps, but still, like the work of a
+true artist, preserving the salient features. We see the curved tusks,
+the snaky trunk, and the shaggy coat that we know belonged to the
+mammoth, and we may feel assured that if early man did not conquer the
+clumsy creature with fire and flint, he yet gazed upon him from the safe
+vantage point of some lofty tree or inaccessible rock, and then went
+home to tell his wife and neighbors how the animal escaped because his
+bow missed fire. That man and mammoth lived together in North America is
+uncertain; so far there is no evidence to show that they did, although
+the absence of such evidence is no proof that they did not. That any
+live mammoth has for centuries been seen on the Alaskan tundras is
+utterly improbable, and on Mr. C. H. Townsend seems to rest the
+responsibility of having, though quite unintentionally, introduced the
+Alaskan Live Mammoth into the columns of the daily press. It befell in
+this wise: Among the varied duties of our revenue marine is that of
+patrolling and exploring the shores of arctic Alaska and the waters of
+the adjoining sea, and it is not so many years ago that the cutter
+_Corwin_, if memory serves aright, held the record of farthest north on
+the Pacific side. On one of these northern trips, to the Kotzebue Sound
+region, famous for the abundance of its deposits of mammoth bones,[16]
+the _Corwin_ carried Mr. Townsend, then naturalist to the United States
+Fish Commission. At Cape Prince of Wales some natives came on board
+bringing a few bones and tusks of the mammoth, and upon being questioned
+as to whether or not any of the animals to which they pertained were
+living, promptly replied that all were dead, inquiring in turn if the
+white men had ever seen any, and if they knew how these animals, so
+vastly larger than a reindeer, looked.
+
+[16] _Elephant Point, at the mouth of the Buckland River, is so named
+from the numbers of mammoth bones which have accumulated there._
+
+Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was on board a text-book of geology
+containing the well-known cut of the St. Petersburg mammoth, and this
+was brought forth, greatly to the edification of the natives, who were
+delighted at recognizing the curved tusks and the bones they knew so
+well. Next the natives wished to know what the outside of the creature
+looked like, and as Mr. Townsend had been at Ward's establishment in
+Rochester when the first copy of the Stuttgart restoration was made, he
+rose to the emergency, and made a sketch. This was taken ashore,
+together with a copy of the cut of the skeleton that was laboriously
+made by an Innuit sprawled out at full length on the deck. Now the
+Innuits, as Mr. Townsend tells us, are great gadabouts, making long
+sledge journeys in winter and equally long trips by boat in summer,
+while each season they hold a regular fair on Kotzebue Sound, where a
+thousand or two natives gather to barter and gossip. On these journeys
+and at these gatherings the sketches were no doubt passed about, copied,
+and recopied, until a large number of Innuits had become well acquainted
+with the appearance of the mammoth, a knowledge that naturally they were
+well pleased to display to any white visitors. Also, like the Celt, the
+Alaskan native delights to give a "soft answer," and is always ready to
+furnish the kind of information desired. Thus in due time the newspaper
+man learned that the Alaskans could make pictures of the mammoth, and
+that they had some knowledge of its size and habits; so with inference
+and logic quite as good as that of the Tungusian peasant, the reporter
+came to the conclusion that somewhere in the frozen wilderness the last
+survivor of the mammoths must still be at large. And so, starting on the
+Pacific coast, the Live Mammoth story wandered from paper to paper,
+until it had spread throughout the length and breadth of the United
+States, when it was captured by Mr. Tukeman, who with much artistic
+color and some realistic touches, transferred it to _McClure's
+Magazine_, and--unfortunately for the officials thereof--to the
+Smithsonian Institution.
+
+And now, once for all, it may be said that _there is no mounted mammoth_
+to awe the visitor to the national collections or to any other; and yet
+there seems no good and conclusive reason why there should not be. True,
+there are no live mammoths to be had at any price; neither are their
+carcasses to be had on demand; still there is good reason to believe
+that a much smaller sum than that said to have been paid by Mr. Conradi
+for the mammoth which is _not_ in the Smithsonian Institution, would
+place one there.[17] It probably could not be done in one year; it might
+not be possible in five years; but should any man of means wish to
+secure enduring fame by showing the world the mammoth as it stood in
+life, a hundred centuries ago, before the dawn of even tradition, he
+could probably accomplish the result by the expenditure of a far less
+sum than it would cost to participate in an international yacht race.
+
+[17] _Since these lines were written another fine example of the Mammoth
+has been discovered in Siberia and even now (Oct., 1901) an expedition
+is on its way to secure the skin and skeleton for the Academy of Natural
+Sciences at St. Petersburg._
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The mounted skeleton of the mammoth in the museum of the Chicago
+Academy of Science is still the only one on exhibition in the United
+States; this specimen is probably the Southern Mammoth, Elephas columbi,
+a species, or race, characterized by its great size and the coarse
+structure of the teeth. Remains of the mammoth are common enough but,
+save in Alaska, they are usually in a poor state of preservation or
+consist of isolated bones or teeth. A great many skeletons of mammoth
+have been found by gold miners in Alaska, and with proper care some of
+these could undoubtedly have been secured. Naturally, however, the
+miners do not feel like taking the time and trouble to exhume bones
+whose value is uncertain, while the cost of transportation precludes the
+bringing out of many specimens._
+
+_Some reports of mammoths have been based on the bones of whales,
+including a skull that was figured in the daily papers._
+
+_Almost every museum has on exhibition teeth of the mammoth, and there
+is a skull, though from a small individual, of the Southern Mammoth in
+the American Museum of Natural History, New York._
+
+_The tusk obtained by Mr. Beach and mentioned in the text still holds
+the record for mammoth tusks. The greatest development of tusks
+occurred in Elephas ganesa, a species found in Pliocene deposits of the
+Siwalik Hills, India. This species appears not to have exceeded the
+existing elephant in bulk, but the tusks are twelve feet nine inches
+long, and two feet two inches in circumference. How the animal ever
+carried them is a mystery, both on account of their size and their
+enormous leverage. As for teeth, an upper grinder of Elephas columbi in
+the United States National Museum is ten and one-half inches high, nine
+inches wide, the grinding face being eight by five inches. This tooth,
+which is unusually perfect, retaining the outer covering of cement, came
+from Afton, Indian Territory, and weighs a little over fifteen pounds.
+The lower tooth, shown in Fig. 38, is twelve inches long, and the
+grinding face is nine by three and one-half inches; this is also from
+Elephas columbi. Grinders of the Northern Mammoth are smaller, and the
+plates of enamel thinner, and closer to one another. Mr. F. E. Andrews,
+of Gunsight, Texas, reports having found a femur, or thigh-bone five
+feet four inches long, and a humerus measuring four feet three inches,
+these being the largest bones on record indicating an animal fourteen
+feet high._
+
+_There is a vast amount of literature relating to the mammoth, some of
+it very untrustworthy. A list of all discoveries of specimens in the
+flesh is given by Nordenskiold in "The Voyage of the Vega" and "The
+Mammoth and the Flood" by Sir Henry Howorth, is a mine of information.
+Mr. Townsend's "Alaska Live-Mammoth Story" may be found in "Forest and
+Stream" for August 14, 1897._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 37.--The Mammoth as Engraved by a Primitive Artist
+on a Piece of Mammoth Tusk.]
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE MASTODON
+
+                   "_... who shall place
+     A limit to the giant's unchained strength?_"
+
+
+The name mastodon is given to a number of species of fossil elephants
+differing from the true elephants, of which the mammoth is an example,
+in the structure of the teeth. In the mastodons the crown, or grinding
+face of the tooth, is formed by more or less regular /\-shaped cross
+ridges, covered with enamel, while in the elephants the enamel takes the
+form of narrow, pocket-shaped plates, set upright in the body of the
+tooth. Moreover, in the mastodons the roots of the teeth are long
+prongs, while in the elephants the roots are small and irregular. A
+glance at the cuts will show these distinctions better than they can be
+explained by words. Back in the past, however, we meet, as we should if
+there is any truth in the theory of evolution, with elephants having an
+intermediate pattern of teeth.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Tooth of Mastodon and of Mammoth.]
+
+There is usually, or at least often, another point of difference between
+elephants and mastodons, for many of the latter not only had tusks in
+the upper, but in the lower jaw, and these are never found in any of the
+true elephants. The lower tusks are longer and larger in the earlier
+species of mastodon than in those of more recent age and in the latest
+species, the common American mastodon, the little lower tusks were
+usually shed early in life. These afford some hints of the relationships
+of the mastodon; for in Europe are found remains of a huge beast well
+called Dinotherium, or terrible animal, which possessed lower tusks
+only, and these, instead of sticking out from the jaw are bent directly
+downwards. No perfect skull of this creature has yet been found, but it
+is believed to have had a short trunk. For a long time nothing but the
+skull was known, and some naturalists thought the animal to have been a
+gigantic manatee, or sea cow, and that the tusks were used for tearing
+food from the bottom of rivers and for anchoring the animal to the bank,
+just as the walrus uses his tusks for digging clams and climbing out
+upon the ice. In the first restorations of Dinotherium it is represented
+lying amidst reeds, the feet concealed from view, the head alone
+visible, but now it is pictured as standing erect, for the discovery of
+massive leg-bones has definitely settled the question as to whether it
+did or did not have limbs.
+
+There is another hint of relationship in the upper tusks of the earlier
+mastodons, and this is the presence of a band of enamel running down
+each tusk. In all gnawing animals the front, cutting teeth are formed of
+soft dentine, or ivory, faced with a plate of enamel, just as the blade
+of a chisel or plane is formed of a plate of tempered steel backed with
+soft iron; the object of this being the same in both tooth and chisel,
+to keep the edge sharp by wearing away the softer material. In the case
+of the chisel this is done by a man with a grindstone, but with the
+tooth it is performed automatically and more pleasantly by the gnawing
+of food. In the mastodon and elephant the tusks, which are the
+representatives of the cutting teeth of rodents, are wide apart, and of
+course do not gnaw anything, but the presence of these enamel bands
+hints at a time when they and their owner were smaller and differently
+shaped, and the teeth were used for cutting. Thus, great though the
+disparity of size may be, there is a suggestion that through the
+mastodon the elephant is distantly related to the mouse, and that, could
+we trace their respective pedigrees far enough, we might find a common
+ancestor.
+
+This presence of structures that are apparently of no use, often worse
+than useless, is regarded as the survival of characters that once served
+some good purpose, like the familiar buttons on the sleeve or at the
+back of a man's coat, or the bows and ruffles on a woman's dress. We
+are told that these are put on "to make the dress look pretty," but the
+student regards the bows as vestiges of the time when there were no
+buttons and hooks and eyes had not been invented, and dresses were tied
+together with strings or ribbons. As for ruffles, they took the place of
+flounces, and flounces are vestiges of the time when a young woman wore
+the greater part of her wardrobe on her back, putting on one dress above
+another, the bottoms of the skirts showing like so many flounces. So
+buttons, ruffles, and the vermiform appendix of which we hear so much
+all fall in the category of vestigial structures.
+
+Where the mastodons originated, we know not: Se�or Ameghino thinks their
+ancestors are to be found in Patagonia, and he is very probably wrong;
+Professor Cope thought they came from Asia, and he is probably right; or
+they may have immigrated from the convenient Antarctica, which is called
+up to account for various facts in the distribution of animals.[18]
+
+[18] _During the past year, 1901, Mr. C. W. Andrews of the British
+Museum has discovered in Egypt a small and primitive species of
+mastodon, also the remains of another animal which he thinks may be the
+long sought ancestor of the elephant family, which includes the mammoth
+and mastodon._
+
+Neither do we at present know just how many species of mastodons there
+may have been in the Western Hemisphere, for most of them are known from
+scattered teeth, single jaws, and odd bones, so that we cannot tell just
+what differences may be due to sex or individual variation. It is
+certain, however, that several distinct kinds, or species, have
+inhabited various parts of North America, while remains of others occur
+in South America. _The_ mastodon, however, the one most recent in point
+of time, and the best known because its remains are scattered far and
+wide over pretty much the length and breadth of the United States, and
+are found also in southern and western Canada, is the well-named
+_Mastodon americanus_,[19] and unless otherwise specified this alone
+will be meant when the name mastodon is used. In some localities the
+mastodon seems to have abounded, but between the Hudson and Connecticut
+Rivers indications of its former presence are rare, and east of that
+they are practically wanting. The best preserved specimens come from
+Ulster and Orange Counties, New York, for these seem to have furnished
+the animal with the best facilities for getting mired. Just west of the
+Catskills, parallel with the valley of the Hudson, is a series of
+meadows, bogs, and pools marking the sites of swamps that came into
+existence after the recession of the mighty ice-sheet that long covered
+eastern North America, and in these many a mastodon, seeking for food or
+water, or merely wallowing in the mud, stuck fast and perished
+miserably. And here to-day the spade of the farmer as he sinks a ditch
+to drain what is left of some beaver pond of bygone days, strikes some
+bone as brown and rugged as a root, so like a piece of water-soaked wood
+that nine times out of ten it is taken for a fragment of tree-trunk.
+
+[19] _This has also been called giganteus and ohioticus, but the name
+americanus claims priority, and should therefore be used._
+
+The first notice of the mastodon in North America goes back to 1712, and
+is found in a letter from Cotton Mather to Dr. Woodward (of England?)
+written at Boston on November 17th, in which he speaks of a large work
+in manuscript entitled _Biblia Americana_, and gives as a sample a note
+on the passage in Genesis (VI. 4) in which we read that "there were
+giants in the earth in those days." We are told that this is confirmed
+by "the bones and teeth of some large animal found lately in Albany, in
+New England, which for some reason he thinks to be human; particularly a
+tooth brought from the place where it was found to New York in 1705,
+being a very large grinder, weighing four pounds and three quarters;
+with a bone supposed to be a thigh-bone, seventeen feet long," the total
+length of the body being taken as seventy-five feet. Thus bones of the
+mastodon, as well as those of the mammoth, have done duty as those of
+giants.
+
+And as the first mastodon remains recorded from North America came from
+the region west of the Hudson, so the first fairly complete skeleton
+also came from that locality, secured at a very considerable outlay of
+money and a still more considerable expenditure of labor by the
+exertions of C. W. Peale. This specimen was described at some length by
+Rembrandt Peale in a privately printed pamphlet, now unfortunately
+rare, and described in some respects better than has been done by any
+subsequent writer, since the points of difference between various parts
+of the mastodon and elephant were clearly pointed out. This skeleton was
+exhibited in London, and afterwards at Peale's Museum in Philadelphia
+where, with much other valuable material, it was destroyed by fire.
+
+Struck by the evident crushing power of the great ridged molars, Peale
+was led to believe that the mastodon was a creature of carnivorous
+habits, and so described it, but this error is excusable, the more that
+to this day, when the mastodon is well known, and its description
+published time and again in the daily papers, finders of the teeth often
+consider them as belonging to some huge beast of prey.
+
+Since the time of Peale several fine specimens have been taken from
+Ulster and Orange Counties, among them the well-known "Warren Mastodon,"
+and there is not the slightest doubt that many more will be recovered
+from the meadows, swamps, and pond holes of these two counties.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 39.--The Missourium of Koch, from a Tracing of the
+Figure Illustrating Koch's Description.]
+
+The next mastodon to appear on the scene was the so-called Missourium of
+Albert Koch, which he constructed somewhat as he did the Hydrarchus (see
+p. 61) of several individuals pieced together, thus forming a skeleton
+that was a monster in more ways than one. To heighten the effect, the
+curved tusks were so placed that they stood out at right angles to the
+sides of the head, like the swords upon the axles of ancient war
+chariots. Like Peale's specimen this was exhibited in London, and there
+it still remains, for, stripped of its superfluous bones, and remounted,
+it may now be seen in the British Museum.
+
+Many a mastodon has come to light since the time of Koch, for while it
+is commonly supposed that remains of the animal are great rarities, as a
+matter of fact they are quite common, and it may safely be said that
+during the seasons of ditching, draining, and well-digging not a week
+passes without one or more mastodons being unearthed. Not that these are
+complete skeletons, very far from it, the majority of finds are
+scattered teeth, crumbling tusks, or massive leg-bones, but still the
+mastodon is far commoner in the museums of this country than is the
+African elephant, for at the present date there are eleven of the former
+to one of the latter, the single skeleton of African elephant being that
+of Jumbo in the American Museum of Natural History. If one may judge by
+the abundance of bones, mastodons must have been very numerous in some
+favored localities such as parts of Michigan, Florida, and Missouri and
+about Big Bone Lick, Ky. Perhaps the most noteworthy of all deposits is
+that at Kimmswick, about twenty miles south of St. Louis, where in a
+limited area Mr. L. W. Beehler has exhumed bones representing several
+hundred individuals, varying in size from a mere baby mastodon up to the
+great tusker whose wornout teeth proclaim that he had reached the limit
+of even mastodonic old age. The spot where this remarkable deposit was
+found is at the foot of a bluff near the junction of two little streams,
+and it seems probable that in the days when these were larger the spring
+floods swept down the bodies of animals that had perished during the
+winter to ground in an eddy beneath the bluff. Or as the place abounds
+in springs of sulphur and salt water it may be that this was where the
+animals assembled during cold weather, just as the moas are believed to
+have gathered in the swamps of New Zealand, and here the weaker died and
+left their bones.
+
+The mastodon must have looked very much like any other elephant, though
+a little shorter in the legs and somewhat more heavily built than either
+of the living species, while the head was a trifle flatter and the jaw
+decidedly longer. The tusks are a variable quantity, sometimes merely
+bowing outwards, often curving upwards to form a half circle; they were
+never so long as the largest mammoth tusks, but to make up for this they
+were a shade stouter for their length. As the mastodon ranged well to
+the north it is fair to suppose that he may have been covered with long
+hair, a supposition that seems to be borne out by the discovery, noted
+by Rembrandt Peale, of a mass of long, coarse, woolly hair buried in one
+of the swamps of Ulster County, New York. And with these facts in mind,
+aided by photographs of various skeletons of mastodons, Mr. Gleeson
+made the restoration which accompanies this chapter.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 40.--The Mastodon. _From a drawing by J. M.
+Gleeson._]
+
+As for the size of the mastodon, this, like that of the mammoth, is
+popularly much over-estimated, and it is more than doubtful if any
+attained the height of a full-grown African elephant. The largest femur,
+or thigh-bone, that has come under the writer's notice was one he
+measured as it lay in the earth at Kimmswick, and this was just four
+feet long, three inches shorter than the thigh-bone of Jumbo. Several of
+the largest thigh-bones measured show so striking an unanimity in size,
+between 46 and 47 inches in length, that we may be pretty sure they
+represent the average old "bull" mastodon, and if we say that these
+animals stood ten feet high we are probably doing them full justice. An
+occasional tusk reaches a length of ten feet, but seven or eight is the
+usual size, with a diameter of as many inches, and this is no larger
+than the tusks of the African elephant would grow if they had a chance.
+It is painful to be obliged to scale down the mastodon as we have just
+done the mammoth, but if any reader knows of specimens larger than those
+noted, he should by all means publish their measurements.[20]
+
+[20] _As skeletons are sometimes mounted, they stand a full foot or more
+higher at the shoulders than the animal stood in life, this being caused
+by raising the body until the shoulder-blades are far below the tips of
+the vertebr�, a position they never assume in life._
+
+The disappearance of the mastodon is as difficult to account for as that
+of the mammoth, and, as will be noted, there is absolutely no evidence
+to show that man had any hand in it. Neither can it be ascribed to
+change of climate, for the mastodon, as indicated by the wide
+distribution of its bones, was apparently adapted to a great diversity
+of climates, and was as much at home amid the cool swamps of Michigan
+and New York as on the warm savannas of Florida and Louisiana. Certainly
+the much used, and abused, glacial epoch cannot be held accountable for
+the extermination of the creature, for the mastodon came into New York
+after the recession of the great ice-sheet, and tarried to so late a
+date that bones buried in the swamps retain much of their animal
+matter. So recent, comparatively speaking, has been the disappearance of
+the mastodon, and so fresh-looking are some of its bones, that Thomas
+Jefferson thought in his day that it might still be living in some part
+of the then unexplored Northwest.
+
+It is a moot question whether or not man and the mastodon were
+contemporaries in North America, and while many there be who, like the
+writer of these lines, believe that this was the case, an expression of
+belief is not a demonstration of fact. The best that can be said is that
+there are scattered bits of testimony, slight though they are, which
+seem to point that way, but no one so strong by itself that it could not
+be shaken by sharp cross-questioning and enable man to prove an alibi in
+a trial by jury. For example, in the great bone deposit at Kimmswick,
+Mo., Mr. Beehler found a flint arrowhead, but this may have lain just
+over the bone-bearing layer, or have got in by some accident in
+excavating. How easily a mistake may be made is shown by the report sent
+to the United States National Museum of many arrowheads associated with
+mastodon bones in a spring at Afton, Indian Territory. This spring was
+investigated, and a few mastodon bones and flint arrowheads were found,
+but the latter were in a stratum just above the bones, although this was
+overlooked by the first diggers.[21] Koch reported finding charcoal and
+arrowheads so associated with mastodon bones that he inferred the animal
+to have been destroyed by fire and arrows after it became mired. It has
+been said that Koch could have had no object in disseminating this
+report, and hence that it may be credited, but he had just as much
+interest in doing this as he did in fabricating the Hydrarchus and the
+Missourium, and his testimony is not to be considered seriously. It
+seems to be with the mastodon much as it is with the sea-serpent; the
+latter never appears to a naturalist, remains of the former are never
+found by a trained observer associated with indications of the presence
+of man. Perhaps an exception should be made in the case of Professor J.
+M. Clarke, who found fragments of charcoal in a deposit of muck under
+some bones of mastodon.
+
+[21] _This locality has just been carefully investigated by Mr. W. H.
+Holmes of the United States National Museum who found bones of the
+mastodon and Southern Mammoth associated with arrowheads. But he also
+found fresh bones of bison, horse, and wolf, showing that these and the
+arrowheads had simply sunk to the level of the older deposit._
+
+We may pass by the so-called "Elephant Mound," which to the eye of an
+unimaginative observer looks as if it might have been intended for any
+one of several beasts; also, with bated breath and due respect for the
+bitter controversy waged over them, pass we by the elephant pipes. There
+remains, then, not a bit of man's handiwork, not a piece of pottery,
+engraved stone, or scratched bone that can _unhesitatingly_ be said to
+have been wrought into the shape of an elephant before the coming of the
+white man. True, there is "The Lenape Stone," found near Doyleston, Pa.,
+in 1872, a gorget graven on one side with the representation of men
+attacking an elephant, while the other bears a number of figures of
+various animals. The good faith of the finder of this stone is
+unimpeachable, but it is a curious fact that, while this gorget is
+elaborately decorated on both sides, no similar stone, out of all that
+have been found, bears any image whatsoever. On the other hand, if not
+made by the aborigines, who made it, why was it made, and why did nine
+years elapse between the discovery of the first and second portions of
+the broken ornament? These are questions the reader may decide for
+himself; the author will only say that to his mind the drawing is too
+elaborate, and depicts entirely too much to have been made by a
+primitive artist. A much better bit of testimony seems to be presented
+by a fragment of Fulgur shell found near Hollyoak, Del., and now in the
+United States National Museum, which bears a very rudely scratched image
+of an animal that may have been intended for a mastodon or a bison. This
+piece of shell is undeniably old, but there is, unfortunately, the
+uncertainty just mentioned as to the animal depicted. The familiar
+legend of the Big Buffalo that destroyed animals and men and defied even
+the lightnings of the Great Spirit has been thought by some to have
+originated in a tradition of the mastodon handed down from ancient
+times; but why consider that the mastodon is meant? Why not a legendary
+bison that has increased with years of story-telling? And so the
+co-existence of man and mastodon must rest as a case of not proven,
+although there is a strong probability that the two did live together in
+the dim ages of the past, and some day the evidence may come to light
+that will prove it beyond a peradventure. If scientific men are charged
+with obstinacy and unwarranted incredulity in declining to accept the
+testimony so far presented, it must be remembered that the evidence as
+to the existence of the sea serpent is far stronger, since it rests on
+the testimony of eye-witnesses, and yet the creature himself has never
+been seen by a trained observer, nor has any specimen, not a scale, a
+tooth, or a bone, ever made its way into any museum.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_There are at least eleven mounted skeletons of the Mastodon in the
+United States, and the writer trusts he may be pardoned for mentioning
+only those which are most accessible. These are in the American Museum
+of Natural History, New York; the State Museum, Albany, N. Y.; Field
+Columbian Museum, Chicago; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg; Museum of
+Comparative Zo�logy, Cambridge, Mass. There is no mounted skeleton in
+the United States National Museum, nor has there ever been._
+
+_The heaviest pair of tusks is in the possession of T. O. Tuttle,
+Seneca, Mich., and they are nine and one-half inches in diameter, and a
+little over eight feet long; very few tusks, however, reach eight inches
+in diameter. The thigh-bone of an old male mastodon measures from
+forty-five to forty-six and one-half inches long, the humerus from
+thirty-five to forty inches. The height of the mounted skeleton is of
+little value as an indication of size, since it depends so much upon the
+manner in which the skeleton is mounted. The grinders of the mastodon
+have three cross ridges, save the last, which has four, and a final
+elevation, or heel. This does not apply to the teeth of very young
+animals. The presence or absence of the last grinder will show whether
+or not the animal is of full age and size, while the amount of wear
+indicates the comparative age of the specimen._
+
+_The skeleton of the "Warren Mastodon" is described at length by Dr. J.
+C. Warren, in a quarto volume entitled "Mastodon Giganteus." There is
+much information in a little book by J. P. MacLean, "Mastodon, Mammoth,
+and Man," but the reader must not accept all its statements
+unhesitatingly. The first volume, 1887, of the New Scribner's Magazine
+contains an article on "American Elephant Myths," by Professor W. B.
+Scott, but he is under an erroneous impression regarding the size of the
+mastodon, and photographs of the Maya carvings show that their
+resemblance to elephants has been exaggerated in the wood cuts. The
+story of the Lenape Stone is told at length by H. C. Mercer in "The
+Lenape Stone, or the Indian and the Mammoth."_
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 41.--The Lenape Stone, Reduced.]
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+WHY DO ANIMALS BECOME EXTINCT?
+
+    "_And Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
+    Abode his destined Hour and went his way._"
+
+
+It is often asked "why do animals become extinct?" but the question is
+one to which it is impossible to give a comprehensive and satisfactory
+reply; this chapter does not pretend to do so, merely to present a few
+aspects of this complicated, many-sided problem.
+
+In very many cases it may be said that actual extermination has not
+taken place, but that in the course of evolution one species has passed
+into another; species may have been lost, but the race, or phylum
+endures, just as in the growth of a tree, the twigs and branches of the
+sapling disappear, while the tree, as a whole, grows onward and upward.
+This is what we see in the horse, which is the living representative of
+an unbroken line reaching back to the little Eocene Hyracothere. So in
+a general way it may be said that much of what at the first glance we
+might term extinction is really the replacement of one set of animals by
+another better adapted to surrounding conditions.
+
+Again, there are many cases of animals, and particularly of large
+animals, so peculiar in their make up, so very obviously adapted to
+their own special surroundings that it requires little imagination to
+see that it would have been a difficult matter for them to have
+responded to even a slight change in the world about them. Such great
+and necessarily sluggish brutes as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, with
+their tons of flesh, small heads, and feeble teeth, were obviously
+reared in easy circumstances, and unfitted to succeed in any strenuous
+struggle for existence. Stegosaurus, with his bizarre array of plates
+and spines, and huge-headed Triceratops, had evidently carried
+specialization to an extreme, while in turn the carnivorous forms must
+have required an abundant supply of slow and easily captured prey.
+
+Coming down to a more recent epoch, when the big Titanotheres
+flourished, it is easy to see from a glance at their large, simple teeth
+that these beasts needed an ample provision of coarse vegetation, and as
+they seem never to have spread far beyond their birthplace, climatic
+change, modifying even a comparatively limited area, would suffice to
+sweep them out of existence. To use the epitaph proposed by Professor
+Marsh for the tombstone of one of the Dinosaurs, many a beast might say,
+"I, and my race perished of over specialization." To revert to the horse
+it will be remembered that this very fate is believed to have overtaken
+those almost horses the European Hippotheres; they reached a point where
+no further progress was possible, and fell by the wayside.
+
+There is, however, still another class of cases where species, families,
+orders, even, seem to have passed out of existence without sufficient
+cause. Those great marine reptiles, the Ichthyosaurs, of Europe, the
+Plesiosaurs and Mosasaurs, of our own continent, seem to have been just
+as well adapted to an aquatic life as the whales, and even better than
+the seals, and we can see no reason why Columbus should not have found
+these creatures still disporting themselves in the Gulf of Mexico. The
+best we can do is to fall back on an unknown "law of progress," and say
+that the trend of life is toward the replacement of large, lower animals
+by those smaller and intellectually higher.
+
+But _why_ there should be an allotted course to any group of animals,
+why some species come to an end when they are seemingly as well fitted
+to endure as others now living, we do not know, and if we say that a
+time comes when the germ-plasm is incapable of further subdivision, we
+merely express our ignorance in an unnecessary number of words. The
+mammoth and mastodon have already been cited as instances of animals
+that have unaccountably become extinct, and these examples are chosen
+from among many on account of their striking nature. The great ground
+sloths, the Mylodons, Megatheres, and their allies, are another case in
+point. At one period or another they reached from Oregon to Virginia,
+Florida, and Patagonia, though it is not claimed that they covered all
+this area at one time. And, while it may be freely admitted that in
+some portions of their range they may have been extirpated by a change
+in food-supply, due in turn to a change in climate, it seems
+preposterous to claim that there was not at all times, somewhere in this
+vast expanse of territory, a climate mild enough and a food-supply large
+enough for the support of even these huge, sluggish creatures. We may
+evoke the aid of primitive man to account for the disappearance of this
+race of giants, and we know that the two were coeval in Patagonia, where
+the sloths seem to have played the r�le of domesticated animals, but
+again it seems incredible that early man, with his flint-tipped spears
+and arrows, should have been able to slay even such slow beasts as these
+to the very last individual.
+
+Of course, in modern times man has directly exterminated many animals,
+while by the introduction of dogs, cats, pigs, and goats he has
+indirectly not only thinned the ranks of animals, but destroyed plant
+life on an enormous scale. But in the past man's capabilities for harm
+were infinitely less than now, while of course the greatest changes took
+place before man even existed, so that, while he is responsible for the
+great changes that have taken place in the world's flora and fauna
+during recent times, his influence, as a whole, has been insignificant.
+Thus, while man exterminated the great northern sea-cow, Rytina, and
+Pallas's cormorant on the Commander Islands, these animals were already
+restricted to this circumscribed area[22] by natural causes, so that man
+but finished what nature had begun. The extermination of the great auk
+in European waters was somewhat similar. There is, however, this
+unfortunate difference between extermination wrought by man and that
+brought about by natural causes: the extermination of species by nature
+is ordinarily slow, and the place of one is taken by another, while the
+destruction wrought by man is rapid, and the gaps he creates remain
+unfilled.
+
+[22] _It is possible that the cormorant may always have been confined to
+this one spot, but this is probably not the case with the sea-cow._
+
+Not so very long ago it was customary to account for changes in the past
+life of the globe by earthquakes, volcanic outbursts, or cataclysms of
+such appalling magnitude that the whole face of nature was changed, and
+entire races of living beings swept out of existence at once. But it is
+now generally conceded that while catastrophes have occurred, yet, vast
+as they may have been, their effects were comparatively local, and,
+while the life of a limited region may have been ruthlessly blotted out,
+life as a whole was but little affected. The eruption of Krakatoa shook
+the earth to its centre and was felt for hundreds of miles around, yet,
+while it caused the death of thousands of living beings, it remains to
+be shown that it produced any effect on the life of the region taken in
+its entirety.
+
+Changes in the life of the globe have been in the main slow and gradual,
+and in response to correspondingly slow changes in the level of portions
+of the earth's crust, with their far-reaching effects on temperature,
+climate, and vegetation. Animals that were what is termed plastic kept
+pace with the altering conditions about them and became modified, too,
+while those that could not adapt themselves to their surroundings died
+out.
+
+How slowly changes may take place is shown by the occurrence of a
+depression in the Isthmus of Panama, in comparatively recent geologic
+time, permitting free communication between the Atlantic and Pacific, a
+sort of natural inter-oceanic canal. And yet the alterations wrought by
+this were, so to speak, superficial, affecting only some species of
+shore fishes and invertebrates, having no influence on the animals of
+the deeper waters. Again, on the Pacific coast are now found a number of
+shells that, as we learn from fossils, were in Pliocene time common on
+both coasts of the United States, and Mr. Dall interprets this to mean
+that when this continent was rising, the steeper shore on the Pacific
+side permitted the shell-fish to move downward and adapt themselves to
+the ever changing shore, while on the Atlantic side the drying of a wide
+strip of level sea-bottom in a relatively short time exterminated a
+large proportion of the less active mollusks. And in this instance
+"relatively short" means positively long; for, compared to the rise of a
+continent from the ocean's bed, the flow of a glacier is the rapid rush
+of a mountain torrent.
+
+Then, too, while a tendency to vary seems to be inherent in animals,
+some appear to be vastly more susceptible than others to outside
+influences, to respond much more readily to any change in the world
+about them. In fact, Professor Cook has recently suggested that the
+inborn tendency to variation is sufficient in itself to account for
+evolution, this tendency being either repressed or stimulated as
+external conditions are stable or variable.
+
+The more uniform the surrounding conditions, and the simpler the animal,
+the smaller is the liability to change, and some animals that dwell in
+the depths of the ocean, where light and temperature vary little, if
+any, remain at a standstill for long periods of time.
+
+The genus Lingula, a small shell, traces its ancestry back nearly to the
+base of the Ordovician system of rocks, an almost inconceivable lapse of
+time, while one species of brachiopod shell endures unchanged from the
+Trenton Limestone to the Lower Carboniferous. In the first case one
+species has been replaced by another, so that the shell of to-day is not
+exactly like its very remote ancestor, but that the type of shell
+should have remained unchanged when so many other animals have arisen,
+flourished for a time, and perished, means that there was slight
+tendency to variation, and that the surrounding conditions were uniform.
+Says Professor Brooks, speaking of Lingula: "The everlasting hills are
+the type of venerable antiquity; but Lingula has seen the continents
+grow up, and has maintained its integrity unmoved by the convulsions
+which have given the crust of the earth its present form."
+
+Many instances of sudden but local extermination might be adduced, but
+among them that of the tile-fish is perhaps the most striking. This
+fish, belonging to a tropical family having its headquarters in the Gulf
+of Mexico, was discovered in 1879 in moderately deep water to the
+southward of Massachusetts and on the edge of the Gulf Stream, where it
+was taken in considerable numbers. In the spring of 1882 vessels
+arriving at New York reported having passed through great numbers of
+dead and dying fishes, the water being thickly dotted with them for
+miles. From samples brought in, it was found that the majority of these
+were tile-fish, while from the reports of various vessels it was shown
+that the area covered by dead fish amounted to somewhere between 5,000
+and 7,500 square miles, and the total number of dead was estimated at
+not far from _a billion_. This enormous and widespread destruction is
+believed to have been caused by an unwonted duration of northerly and
+easterly winds, which drove the cold arctic current inshore and
+southwards, chilling the warm belt in which the tile-fish resided and
+killing all in that locality. It was thought possible that the entire
+race might have been destroyed, but, while none were taken for many
+years, in 1899 and in 1900 a number were caught, showing that the
+species was beginning to reoccupy the waters from which it had been
+driven years before.
+
+The effect of any great fall in temperature on animals specially adapted
+to a warm climate is also illustrated by the destruction of the Manatees
+in the Sebastian River, Florida, by the winter of 1894-95, which came
+very near exterminating this species. Readers may remember that this was
+the winter that wrought such havoc with the blue-birds, while in the
+vicinity of Washington, D. C., the fish-crows died by hundreds, if not
+by thousands.
+
+Fishes may also be exterminated over large areas by outbursts of
+poisonous gases from submarine volcanoes, or more rarely by some vast
+lava flood pouring into the sea and actually cooking all living beings
+in the vicinity. And in the past these outbreaks took place on a much
+larger scale than now, and naturally wrought more widespread
+destruction.
+
+A recent instance of local extermination is the total destruction of a
+humming-bird, _Bellona ornata_, peculiar to the island of St. Vincent,
+by the West Indian hurricane of 1898, but this is naturally extirpation
+on a very small scale.
+
+Still, the problems of nature are so involved that while local
+destruction is ordinarily of little importance, or temporary in its
+effects, it may lead to the annihilation of a species by breaking a race
+of animals into isolated groups, thereby leading to inbreeding and slow
+decline. The European bison, now confined to a part of Lithuania and a
+portion of the Caucasus, seems to be slowly but surely approaching
+extinction in spite of all efforts to preserve the race, and no reason
+can be assigned for this save that the small size of the herds has led
+to inbreeding and general decadence.
+
+In other ways, too, local calamity may be sweeping in its effects, and
+that is by the destruction of animals that resort to one spot during the
+breeding season, like the fur-seals and some sea-birds, or pass the
+winter months in great flocks or herds, as do the ducks and elk. The
+supposed decimation of the Moas by severe winters has been already
+discussed, and the extermination of the great auk in European waters was
+indirectly due to natural causes. These birds bred on the small, almost
+inaccessible island of Eldey, off the coast of Iceland, and when,
+through volcanic disturbances, this islet sank into the sea, the few
+birds were forced to other quarters, and as these were, unfortunately,
+easily reached, the birds were slain to the last one.
+
+From the great local abundance of their remains, it has been thought
+that the curious short-legged Pliocene rhinoceros, _Aphelops fossiger_,
+was killed off in the West by blizzards when the animals were gathered
+in their winter quarters, and other long-extinct animals, too, have been
+found under such conditions as to suggest a similar fate.
+
+Among local catastrophes brought about by unusually prolonged cold may
+be cited the decimation of the fur-seal herds of the Pribilof Islands in
+1834 and 1859, when the breeding seals were prevented from landing by
+the presence of ice-floes, and perished by thousands. Peculiar interest
+is attached to this case, because the restriction of the northern
+fur-seals to a few isolated, long undiscovered islands, is believed to
+have been brought about by their complete extermination in other
+localities by prehistoric man. Had these two seasons killed all the
+seals, it would have been a reversal of the customary extermination by
+man of a species reduced in numbers by nature.
+
+In the case of large animals another element probably played a part. The
+larger the animal, the fewer young, as a rule, does it bring forth at a
+birth, the longer are the intervals between births, and the slower the
+growth of the young. The loss of two or three broods of sparrows or two
+or three litters of rabbits makes comparatively little difference, as
+the loss is soon supplied, but the death of the young of the larger and
+higher mammals is a more serious matter. A factor that has probably
+played an important r�le in the extinction of animals is the relation
+that exists between various animals, and the relations that also exist
+between animals and plants, so that the existence of one is dependent on
+that of another. Thus no group of living beings, plants or animals, can
+be affected without in some way affecting others, so that the injury or
+destruction of some plant may result in serious harm to some animal.
+Nearly everyone is familiar with the classic example given by Darwin of
+the effect of cats on the growth of red clover. This plant is fertilized
+by bumble bees only, and if the field mice, which destroy the nests of
+the bees, were not kept in check by cats, or other small carnivores,
+their increase would lessen the numbers of the bees and this in turn
+would cause a dearth of clover.
+
+The yuccas present a still more wonderful example of the dependence of
+plants on animals, for their existence hangs on that of a small moth
+whose peculiar structure and habits bring about the fertilization of the
+flower. The two probably developed side by side until their present
+state of inter-dependence was reached, when the extinction of the one
+would probably bring about that of the other.
+
+It is this inter-dependence of living things that makes the outcome of
+any direct interference with the natural order of things more or less
+problematical, and sometimes brings about results quite different from
+what were expected or intended.
+
+The gamekeepers on the grouse moors of Scotland systematically killed
+off all birds of prey because they caught some of the grouse, but this
+is believed to have caused far more harm than good through permitting
+weak and sickly birds, that would otherwise have fallen a prey to hawks,
+to live and disseminate the grouse distemper.
+
+The destruction of sheep by coyotes led the State of California to place
+a bounty on the heads of these animals, with the result that in
+eighteen months the State was called upon to pay out $187,485. As a
+result of the war on coyotes the animals on which they fed, notably the
+rabbits, increased so enormously that in turn a bounty was put on
+rabbits, the damage these animals caused the fruit-growers being greater
+than the losses among sheep-owners from the depredations of coyotes. And
+so, says Dr. Palmer, "In this remarkable case of legislation a large
+bounty was offered by a county in the interest of fruit-growers to
+counteract the effects of a State bounty expended mainly for the benefit
+of sheep-owners!"
+
+Professor Shaler, in noting the sudden disappearance of such trees as
+the gums, magnolias, and tulip poplars from the Miocene flora of Europe
+has suggested that this may have been due to the attacks, for a series
+of years, of some insect enemy like the gipsy moth, and the theory is
+worth considering, although it must be looked upon as a possibility
+rather than a probability. Still, anyone familiar with the ravages of
+the gipsy moth in Massachusetts, where the insect was introduced by
+accident, can readily imagine what _might_ have been the effect of some
+sudden increase in the numbers of such a pest on the forests of the
+past. Trees might resist the attacks of enemies and the destruction of
+their leaves for two or three years, but would be destroyed by a few
+additional seasons of defoliation.
+
+Ordinarily the abnormal increase of any insect is promptly followed by
+an increase in the number of its enemies; the pest is killed off, the
+destroyers die of starvation and nature's balance is struck. But if by
+some accident, such as two or three consecutive seasons of wet, drought,
+or cold, the natural increase of the enemies was checked, the balance of
+nature would be temporarily destroyed and serious harm done. That such
+accidents may occur is familiar to us by the damage wrought in Florida
+and other Southern States by the unwonted severity of the winters of
+1893, 1895, and 1899.
+
+If any group of forest trees was destroyed in the manner suggested by
+Professor Shaler, the effects would be felt by various plants and
+animals. In the first place, the insects that fed on these trees would
+be forced to seek another source of food and would be brought into a
+silent struggle with forms already in possession, while the destruction
+of one set of plants would be to the advantage of those with which they
+came into competition and to the disadvantage of vegetation that was
+protected by the shade. Finally, these changed conditions would react in
+various ways on the smaller birds and mammals, the general effect being,
+to use a well-worn simile, like that of casting a stone into a quiet
+pool and setting in motion ripples that sooner or later reach to every
+part of the margin.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to warn the reader that for the most part this
+is purely conjectural, for from the nature of the case it is bound to be
+so. But it is one of the characteristics of educated man that he wishes
+to know the why and wherefore of everything, and is in a condition of
+mental unhappiness until he has at least formulated some theory which
+seems to harmonize with the visible facts. And from the few glimpses we
+get of the extinction of animals from natural causes we must formulate a
+theory to fit the continued extermination that has been taking place
+ever since living beings came into the world and were pitted against one
+another and against their surroundings in the silent and ceaseless
+struggle for existence.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_The asterisk denotes that the animal or object is figured on or
+opposite the page referred to._
+
+
+    �pyornis, egg of, 145, 148,* 147, 157
+      eggs found in swamps, 148;
+        found floating, 148
+      eggs used for bowls, 145
+      origin of fable of Roc, 144, 145
+
+    Alaskan Live Mammoth Story, 190-193, 197
+
+    Anomoepus tracks, 39
+
+    Apteryx egg, 147
+
+    Arch�opteryx, description of, 77, 78
+      discovery of, 77
+      earliest known bird, 70
+      restoration, 89*
+      specimens of, 70,* 88
+      wing, 72,* 73
+
+    Archelon, a great turtle, 54
+
+
+    Basilosaurus, 60
+      See also Zeuglodon
+
+    Beehler, L. W., 209, 213
+
+    Birds, always clad in feathers, 71, 127
+      earliest, 70
+
+    Birds, first intimation of, 76
+      rarity of fossil, 86, 87
+      related to reptiles, 92
+      wings of embryonic, 73
+      with teeth, 79, 88
+
+    Bison, European, 231
+
+    Books of reference, xix, 17, 32, 47, 69, 89, 110, 137, 158, 176,
+      197, 218
+
+    Breeding of large animals, 233
+
+    Brontornis, size of leg-bones, 149
+
+    Brontosaurus, size of bones, 96,* 97,* 109
+
+    Brooks, W. K., on Lingula, 229
+
+    Buffalo legend, 216
+
+    Buttons as vestigial structures, 202
+
+
+    Carcharodon auriculatus, 66
+      teeth, 66
+      megalodon, 65
+      estimated size, 66
+      teeth, 65, 67
+
+    Carson City footprints, 45
+
+    Casts, how formed, 10, 11
+
+    Cats and clover, 234
+
+    Cephalaspis, 24*
+
+    Ceratosaurus, habits, 106
+      restoration, 106*
+      skull, 110*
+
+    Changes in Nature slow, 227
+
+    Cheirotherium, 43
+
+    Chlamydosaurus, 129
+
+    Claosaurus. See Thespesius
+
+    Climate, changes in western United States, 174
+
+    Clover and cats, 234
+
+    Cold, effects of, on animals, 230, 231, 233
+
+    Cold winters, 230
+
+    Collecting fossils, 17, 112-116
+
+    Color of large land animals, 134
+      of young animals, 136
+
+    Covering of extinct animals sometimes indicated, 131, 132
+
+    Coyotes, effect of their destruction on fruit, 236
+
+
+    Dall, W. H., theory as to extinction of mollusks, 227
+
+    Dinosaurs, bones of, 109, 110
+      brain of, 93
+      collections of, 109
+      compared to marsupials, 95
+      first discovered, 90
+      food required by, 98
+      hip-bones mistaken for shoulder-blade, 120
+      Professor Marsh's epitaph for, 222
+      range, 92
+      recognized as new order of reptiles, 91
+      related to ostrich and alligator, 91
+      size of, 95, 96, 98
+      tracks, ascribed to birds, 38
+
+    Dinotherium, 200
+
+    Diplodocus, estimated weight, 99
+      supposed habits, 99
+
+
+    Egg of �pyornis, 147, 148;
+      Apteryx, 147;
+      Ostrich, 146;
+      Moa, 148
+
+    Eggs, casts of, 87
+
+    Elephant, size, 180
+      size of tusks, 181, 182
+
+    Elephas ganesa, tusks, 196
+
+    Encrustations, 14
+
+    Extermination. See Extinction
+
+    Extinction, ascribed to great convulsions, 225
+      ascribed to primitive man, 188, 224
+      of Dinosaurs, 221
+      local, 225
+      by man, 224, 225
+      of Marine Reptiles, 222
+      often unaccountable, 222, 223
+      of Pliocene rhinoceros, 232
+      sometimes evolution, 221, 226
+      of Titanotheres, 222
+
+
+    Feathers, imprints of, 76, 132
+
+    Fishes, abundance of, 25
+      armored, 23, 24, 25, 28
+      collections of, 32
+      killed by cold, 230
+      killed by volcanoes, 231
+
+    Fish-crows, killed by cold, 231
+
+    Flesh does not petrify, 10
+
+    Flightless birds, absent from Tasmania, 155
+      present distribution, 154, 155
+      relation between flightlessness and size, 156
+
+    Folds and frills, 129
+
+    Footprints, collections of, 47
+      books on, 47
+      See also under Tracks
+
+    Fossil birds, rarity of, 86
+
+    Fossil man, 13
+
+    Fossilization a slow process, 10
+
+    Fossils, conditions under which they are formed, 5, 7
+      collecting, 112-116
+      definition of, 1
+      deformation of, 16
+      impressions, 2, 3
+      not necessarily petrifactions, 2
+      preparation of, 117-119
+      why they are not more common, 5, 15, 16
+
+    Fowls, muscles of, 81
+
+    Frill of Triceratops, 102
+
+    Fur-seals killed by ice-floes, 233
+
+
+    Gar pikes, destruction of, 26
+
+    Giant birds, reasons for distribution and flightlessness, 153
+
+    Giant Moa, 141
+      leg compared with that of horse, 152*
+
+    Giant Sloth, domesticated by man, 224
+      struggle between, 46
+
+    Giant Sloth, tracks at Carson City, 46
+
+    Gilfort, Robert, 157
+
+    Great Auk, extermination of, 232
+
+    Grouse on Scotch moors, 235
+
+
+    Hawkins, B. W., restorations by, 137
+
+    Hesperornis, description of, 80
+      impressions of feathers, 132
+      position of legs, 83, 84
+      restoration of, 82*
+
+    Hippotherium, 166, 167
+
+    Hoactzin, habits of, 74, 75*
+
+    Horn does not petrify, 130
+
+    Horse, abundant in Pleistocene time, 164
+      books on, 176
+      of bronze age, 163, 167
+      collections of fossil, 176
+      development of, 167, 168,* 175
+      differences between fossil and living, 163
+      early domestication, 165
+      evidence as to genealogy, 170-173
+      extra-toed, 172, 173
+      found in South America in 1530, 165
+      of Julius C�sar, 172
+      none found wild in historic times, 165
+      Pliocene, 166
+      possibility of existence in America up to the time of its
+        discovery, 169, 170
+      primitive, 160, 161*
+
+    Horse, sketched by primitive man, 163
+      teeth of, 170
+      three-toed, 166
+
+    Humming-bird, exterminated by hurricane, 231
+
+    Hydrarchus, 62*
+
+    Hyracotherium, 160, 161,* 170, 174
+
+
+    Ichthyosaurs, silhouettes of, 132
+
+    Iguanodons, found at Bernissart, 104
+
+    Impressions of feathers, 131
+      of scales, 131
+      of skin, 131
+
+    Inbreeding, effects of, 231, 232
+
+    Information, sources of, xvi
+
+    Innuits, habits, 192
+
+    Interdependence of animals and plants, 234, 235, 238
+
+    Ivory, fossil, 2, 4, 188, 189
+
+
+    Jaw of Mosasaur, 54*
+      of reptiles, 53
+
+
+    Killing of the Mammoth, story, 177, 193
+
+    Kimmswick, deposit of Mastodon bones, 209
+
+    Knight, Charles R., restorations by, xviii, 136
+
+    Koch's Hydrarchus, 61, 62*
+      Missourium, 207,* 208
+
+
+    Leaves, impressions of, 3, 13
+
+    Leg of Brontornis, 149*
+
+    Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, 96*
+      of Giant Moa, 152*
+      position in Hesperornis, 83
+      position in ducks, 84
+
+    Lenape Stone, 215, 216, 219*
+
+    Life, earliest traces of, 21, 34
+
+    Lingula, antiquity of, 228
+      Professor Brooks on, 229
+
+    Loricaria, 24*
+
+
+    Mammoth, adapted to a cold climate, 134
+      Alaskan Live, Story, 190
+      believed to live underground, 178
+      bones taken for those of giants, 185
+      contemporary with man, 189
+      derivation of name, 178
+      description, 179
+      discovery of entire specimens, 183, 187
+      distribution, 184, 186
+      drawn by early man, 189, 197*
+      entire specimens obtainable, 194
+      reasons for extermination, 188
+      killing of the, 177
+      literature on, 197
+      misconception as to size, 179
+      mounted skeleton, 179
+      not now living, 190
+      preservation of remains, 187
+      skeletons in Alaska, 181, 195
+
+    Mammoth, in Chicago Academy of Sciences, 179
+      at St. Petersburg, 183*
+      restoration, 176*
+      size, 179, 180, 181
+      size of tusks, 181, 196
+      teeth, 196, 199*
+      teeth dredged in North Sea, 184
+      tusks brought into market, 188, 189
+
+    Man contemporary with Mammoth, 189
+      fossil, 13
+      of Guadeloupe, 13
+
+    Manatees killed by cold, 230
+
+    Marsh, Prof. O. C., collection of fossil horses, 176
+      on Dinosaurs, 222
+      on toothed birds, 79, 89
+
+    Mastodon, bones taken for those of giants, 205
+      thought to be carnivorous, 206
+      covering, 210
+      description, 210
+      distribution, 203, 210, 212
+      extinction, 212
+      literature, 218
+      and man, 215, 216
+      first noticed in America, 204
+      origin unknown, 202
+      remains abundant, 208, 209
+      remains in Ulster and Orange counties, New York, 204, 206
+      restoration, 210*
+
+    Mastodon, size, 211
+      skeletons on exhibition, 218
+      species, 203
+      teeth, 198, 199,* 218
+      tusks, 199, 200
+
+    Mesohippus, 167
+
+    Mimicry, not conscious, 128
+
+    Missourium of Koch, 207,* 208
+
+    Moas, collections of, 156, 157
+      contemporary with man, 143, 144
+      deductions from distribution, 143
+      destruction of, 143, 144
+      discovery of bones, 140
+      elephant-footed, 142
+      feathers of, 141
+      Giant, 141
+      supposed food of, 142
+      legends of, 139, 140
+      literature, 158
+      scientific names, 146
+      size of, 141
+      species of, 141
+
+    Moloch, an Australian lizard, 100*
+
+    Mosasaurs, abundance of, in Kansas, 52
+      books on, 69
+      collections of, 68
+      extinction of, 56
+      first discovery, 50
+      jaw of, 54*
+
+    Mosasaurs, range of, 49
+      restoration, 52*
+      size of, 49, 50
+
+    Mylodon tracks at Carson City, 45
+
+
+    Names, scientific, reasons for using, xvi, xvii
+
+    Nature, balance of, 238
+
+    Nuts, fossil, 11
+
+
+    Oldest animals, 21
+      vertebrates, 19, 22
+
+    Ostrich egg, 147
+
+    Over-specialization, 221, 222
+
+
+    Peale, C. W., 205
+
+    Peale, Rembrandt, 205, 206
+
+    Pelican, mandible, 53
+
+    Penguins, depend on fat for warmth, 127
+      feathers highly modified, 128
+      swim with wings, 80
+
+    Petrified bodies, 10
+
+    Phororhacos, description of, 149
+      mistaken for mammal, 149
+      Patagonian bird, 148
+      related to heron family, 152
+      restoration, frontispiece
+      skull, 150, 151*
+
+    Protohippus, 166
+
+    Pteraspis, 28
+
+    Pterichthys, 25, 28, 32*
+      mistaken for crab, 25
+
+    Pterodactyls, impressions of wings, 133
+      from Kansas, 55
+      wing, 72*
+
+    Pycraft, W. P., restoration of Arch�opteryx, 89
+
+
+    Radiolarians, 15, 17*
+
+    Reconstruction of animals, 127, 130, 134
+
+    Reptiles, fasting powers of, 98
+      growth throughout life, 102
+      jaws, 53
+
+    Restorations, xviii
+      Arch�opteryx, 89*
+      Ceratosaurus, 106*
+      Hesperornis, 82*
+      Mammoth, 176*
+      Mastodon, 210*
+      Phororhacos, frontispiece
+      progress in, 137
+      Stegosaurus, 108*
+      Thespesius, 90*
+      Triceratops, 126*
+      Tylosaurus, 52*
+
+    Reversion of fancy stock, 171
+
+    Rhinoceros, exterminated by cold, 232
+
+    Roc, legend of, 144, 145
+
+    Rocks, thickness of sedimentary, 20
+
+    Ruffles on dresses, 202
+
+
+    Schuchert, Charles, on collecting fossils, 17
+      collector of Zeuglodon bones, 63
+
+    Seals, covering of, 128
+
+    Sea-serpent, belief in, 56
+      possibility of existence, 57
+
+    Shaler, Professor, on changes in Miocene flora of Europe, 236, 237
+
+    Sharks, early, 31
+      Great-toothed, 65
+      known from spines and teeth, 29
+      Port Jackson, 29
+      teeth of, 69
+      White, or Man-Eater, 65
+
+    Skeleton, basis of all restorations, 127
+      best testimony of animal's relationships, 124
+      information to be derived from, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127
+      a problem in mechanics, 102, 124
+      reconstruction of, 120
+      relation of, to exterior of animal, 121, 127
+      of Triceratops, 103,* 121
+
+    Spines and plates, 130
+
+    Stegosaurus, description of, 106
+      restoration of, 108*
+
+    Survival of the fittest, 173
+
+
+    Teeth, birds with, 79
+      of gnawing animals, 169, 200
+      of grass-eaters, 169
+
+    Teeth, of horse, 170
+      of mammoth, 198, 199*
+      of mastodon, 198, 199*
+      of sharks, 29, 30
+      of Thespesius, 105
+
+    Thespesius, abundance of, 104, 105
+      brain of, 93
+      (Same as Claosaurus)
+      engulfed in quicksand, 8
+      impressions of skin, 132
+      restoration of, 90*
+      teeth of, 105
+      at Yale, 109
+
+    Tiger, preying on reindeer, 134
+
+    Tile-fish, destruction of, 230
+
+    Titanichthys, 28, 29
+
+    Toothed birds, collections of, 88
+      discovery of, 79
+
+    Townsend C. H., 190-192
+
+    Tracks, ascribed to birds, 38
+      ascribed to giants, 45
+      animals known from, 41
+      collections of, 47
+      of Connecticut Valley, 37
+      deductions from, 44
+      of Dinosaurs, 38,* 40,* 41, 47*
+      discovery in England and America, 37, 42
+      how formed, 35, 40
+      at Hastings, 44
+
+    Tracks, of Mylodon, 46
+      of worms, 3, 33
+
+    Triceratops, brain, 94
+      broken horn, 102
+      description, 100, 101
+      restoration, 126*
+      skeleton, 103*
+
+    Tufa, 14
+
+    Tukeman, killing of the Mammoth, 177, 193
+
+
+    Variation in animals, 228
+
+    Vertebrates, oldest, 22
+
+    Vestigial structures, 201, 202
+
+    Volcanic outbursts, 231, 232
+
+
+    Webster, F. S., on destruction of gar pikes, 26
+
+    White, C. A., on the nature and uses of fossils, 17
+
+    White Shark, 65
+
+    Wings, 71, 72,* 73
+      of embryonic birds, 73
+
+    Wood, fossil, 9, 10
+
+    Worm trails, 3, 33
+
+
+    Yucca, fertilization, 235
+
+
+    Zeuglodon, abundance of remains, 60
+      same as Basilosaurus
+      description, 58, 63
+      habits, 59
+
+    Zeuglodon, Koch's restoration, 62
+      name, 58, 69
+      once numerous, 60
+      size, 58
+      specimen of, 68
+      structure of bones, 64
+      teeth, 58, 69*
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Animals of the Past, by Frederic A. Lucas
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Animals of the Past, by Frederic A. Lucas
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Animals of the Past
+
+Author: Frederic A. Lucas
+
+Release Date: November 14, 2011 [EBook #38013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANIMALS OF THE PAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
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+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p class="h1">ANIMALS OF THE PAST</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_005.jpg" width="400" height="541"  alt="" />
+Phororhacos, a Patagonian Giant of the Miocene.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by Charles R. Knight.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="h4"><i>Science for Everybody</i></p>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1 class="booktitle">ANIMALS OF THE PAST</h1>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="h3">BY<br />
+FREDERIC A. LUCAS</p>
+
+<p class="h5"><i>Curator of the Division of Comparative Anatomy,<br />
+United States National Museum</i></p>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="h5">FULLY ILLUSTRATED</p>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="h5">NEW YORK<br />
+McCLURE, PHILLIPS &amp; CO.<br />
+1901</p>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="h6"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1900, by S. S. McClure Co.<br />
+1901, by McClure, Phillips &amp; Co.</span></p>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="h6"><span class="smcap">Published November, 1901.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="spacer">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="bold">
+<p><br />INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY</p>
+
+<p class="out">Use of scientific names,<a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a>; estimates of age of earth,<a href="#Page_xvii">xvii</a>;
+restorations by Mr. Knight,<a href="#Page_xviii">xviii</a>; Works of Reference,<a href="#Page_xix">xix</a>.</p>
+
+<p>I. FOSSILS, AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED</p>
+
+<p class="out">Definition of fossils,<a href="#Page_1">1</a>; fossils may be indications of animals or
+plants, 2; casts and impressions,<a href="#Page_3">3</a>; why fossils are not more
+abundant,<a href="#Page_4">4</a>; conditions under which fossils are formed,<a href="#Page_5">5</a>;
+enemies of bones,<a href="#Page_6">6</a>; Dinosaurs engulfed in quicksand,<a href="#Page_8">8</a>;
+formation of fossils,<a href="#Page_9">9</a>; petrified bodies frauds,<a href="#Page_10">10</a>; natural
+casts,<a href="#Page_10">10</a>; leaves,<a href="#Page_13">13</a>; incrustations,<a href="#Page_14">14</a>; destruction of fossils,
+15; references,<a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p>II. THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATES</p>
+
+<p class="out">Methods of interrogating Nature,<a href="#Page_18">18</a>; thickness of sedimentary
+rocks,<a href="#Page_20">20</a>; earliest traces of life,<a href="#Page_21">21</a>; early vertebrates
+difficult of preservation,<a href="#Page_22">22</a>; armored fishes,<a href="#Page_23">23</a>; abundance
+of early fishes,<a href="#Page_25">25</a>; destruction of fish,<a href="#Page_26">26</a>; carboniferous
+sharks,<a href="#Page_29">29</a>; known mostly from teeth and spines,<a href="#Page_30">30</a>; references,
+32.</p>
+
+<p>III. IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST</p>
+
+<p class="out">Records of extinct animals,<a href="#Page_33">33</a>; earliest traces of animal life,
+34; formation of tracks,<a href="#Page_35">35</a>; tracks in all strata,<a href="#Page_36">36</a>; discovery
+of tracks,<a href="#Page_37">37</a>; tracks of Dinosaurs,<a href="#Page_39">39</a>; species named
+from tracks,<a href="#Page_41">41</a>; footprints aid in determining attitude of animals,
+43; tracks at Carson City,<a href="#Page_45">45</a>; references,<a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>IV. RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS</p>
+
+<p class="out">The Mosasaurs,<a href="#Page_49">49</a>; history of the first known Mosasaur,<a href="#Page_50">50</a>;
+jaws of reptiles,<a href="#Page_53">53</a>; extinction of Mosasaurs,<a href="#Page_55">55</a>; the sea-serpent,
+56; Zeuglodon,<a href="#Page_58">58</a>; its habits,<a href="#Page_59">59</a>; Koch's Hydrarchus,
+61; bones collected by Mr. Schuchert,<a href="#Page_63">63</a>; abundance
+of sharks,<a href="#Page_64">64</a>; the great Carcharodon,<a href="#Page_65">65</a>; arrangement of
+sharks' teeth,<a href="#Page_67">67</a>; references,<a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</p>
+
+<p>V. BIRDS OF OLD</p>
+
+<p class="out">Earliest birds,<a href="#Page_70">70</a>; wings,<a href="#Page_71">71</a>; study of young animals,<a href="#Page_73">73</a>;
+the curious Hoactzin,<a href="#Page_74">74</a>; first intimation of birds,<a href="#Page_76">76</a>; Arch&aelig;opteryx,
+77; birds with teeth,<a href="#Page_78">78</a>; cretaceous birds,<a href="#Page_79">79</a>; Hesperornis,
+80; loss of power of flight,<a href="#Page_81">81</a>; covering of Hesperornis,
+82; attitude of Hesperornis,<a href="#Page_83">83</a>; curious position of
+legs,<a href="#Page_84">84</a>; toothed birds disappointing,<a href="#Page_85">85</a>; early development
+of birds,<a href="#Page_86">86</a>; eggs of early birds,<a href="#Page_87">87</a>; references,<a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p>VI. THE DINOSAURS</p>
+
+<p class="out">Discovery of Dinosaur remains,<a href="#Page_90">90</a>; nearest relatives of Dinosaurs,
+91; relation of birds to reptiles,<a href="#Page_92">92</a>; brain of Dinosaurs,
+93; parallel between Dinosaurs and Marsupials,<a href="#Page_95">95</a>;
+the great Brontosaurus,<a href="#Page_96">96</a>; food of Dinosaurs,<a href="#Page_97">97</a>; habits of
+Diplodocus,<a href="#Page_99">99</a>; the strange Australian Moloch,<a href="#Page_100">100</a>; combats
+of Triceratops,<a href="#Page_101">101</a>; skeleton of Triceratops,<a href="#Page_102">102</a>; Thespesius
+and his kin,<a href="#Page_104">104</a>; the carnivorous Ceratosaurus,<a href="#Page_106">106</a>;
+Stegosaurus, the plated lizard,<a href="#Page_106">106</a>; preferences,<a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p>VII. READING THE RIDDLES OF THE ROCKS</p>
+
+<p class="out">Fossils regarded as sports of nature,<a href="#Page_111">111</a>; qualifications of a
+successful collector,<a href="#Page_112">112</a>; chances of collecting,<a href="#Page_114">114</a>; excavation
+of fossils,<a href="#Page_115">115</a>; strengthening fossils for shipment,<a href="#Page_117">117</a>;
+great size of some specimens,<a href="#Page_118">118</a>; the preparation of fossils,
+119; mistakes of anatomists,<a href="#Page_120">120</a>; reconstruction of
+Triceratops,<a href="#Page_121">121</a>; distinguishing characters of bones,<a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span>
+the skeleton a problem in mechanics,<a href="#Page_124">124</a>; clothing the bones
+with flesh,<a href="#Page_127">127</a>; the covering of animals,<a href="#Page_127">127</a>; outside ornamentation,
+129; probabilities in the covering of animals,<a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+impressions of extinct animals,<a href="#Page_131">131</a>; mistaken inferences
+from bones of Mammoth,<a href="#Page_133">133</a>; coloring of large land animals,
+134; color markings of young animals,<a href="#Page_136">136</a>; references,<a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p>VIII. FEATHERED GIANTS</p>
+
+<p class="out">Legend of the Moa,<a href="#Page_139">139</a>; our knowledge of the Moas,<a href="#Page_141">141</a>;
+some Moas wingless,<a href="#Page_142">142</a>; deposits of Moa bones,<a href="#Page_143">143</a>; legend
+of the Roc,<a href="#Page_144">144</a>; discovery of &AElig;pyornis,<a href="#Page_145">145</a>; large-sounding
+names,<a href="#Page_146">146</a>; eggs of great birds,<a href="#Page_147">147</a>; the Patagonian
+Phororhacos,<a href="#Page_149">149</a>; the huge Brontornis,<a href="#Page_150">150</a>; development
+of giant birds,<a href="#Page_153">153</a>; distribution of flightless birds,<a href="#Page_154">154</a>;
+relation between flightlessness and size,<a href="#Page_156">156</a>; references,<a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</p>
+
+<p>IX. THE ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE</p>
+
+<p class="out">North America in the Eocene age,<a href="#Page_160">160</a>; appearance of early
+horses,<a href="#Page_163">163</a>; early domestication of the horse,<a href="#Page_165">165</a>; the toes
+of horses,<a href="#Page_166">166</a>; Miocene horses small,<a href="#Page_167">167</a>; evidence of genealogy
+of the horse,<a href="#Page_170">170</a>; meaning of abnormalities,<a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+changes in the climate and animals of the West,<a href="#Page_174">174</a>; references,
+176.</p>
+
+<p>X. THE MAMMOTH</p>
+
+<p class="out">The story of the killing of the Mammoth,<a href="#Page_177">177</a>; derivation of
+the word "mammoth,"<a href="#Page_178">178</a>; mistaken ideas as to size of the
+Mammoth,<a href="#Page_179">179</a>; size of Mammoth and modern elephants,
+180; finding of an entire Mammoth,<a href="#Page_182">182</a>; birthplace of the
+Mammoth,<a href="#Page_184">184</a>; beliefs concerning its bones,<a href="#Page_185">185</a>; the range
+of the animal,<a href="#Page_186">186</a>; theories concerning the extinction of the
+Mammoth,<a href="#Page_188">188</a>; Man and Mammoth,<a href="#Page_189">189</a>; origin of the
+Alaskan Live Mammoth Story,<a href="#Page_190">190</a>; traits of the Innuits,
+192; an entire Mammoth recently found,<a href="#Page_194">194</a>; references,
+195.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>XI. THE MASTODON</p>
+
+<p class="out">Differences between Mastodon and Mammoth,<a href="#Page_198">198</a>; affinities
+of the Mastodon,<a href="#Page_200">200</a>; vestigial structures,<a href="#Page_201">201</a>; distribution
+of American Mastodon,<a href="#Page_203">203</a>; first noticed in North America,
+204; thought to be carnivorous,<a href="#Page_206">206</a>; Koch's Missourium,
+208; former abundance of Mastodons,<a href="#Page_209">209</a>; appearance of
+the animal,<a href="#Page_210">210</a>; its size,<a href="#Page_211">211</a>; was man contemporary with
+Mastodon?<a href="#Page_213">213</a>; the Lenape stone,<a href="#Page_215">215</a>; legend of the big
+buffalo,<a href="#Page_216">216</a>; references,<a href="#Page_218">218</a>.</p>
+
+<p>XII. WHY DO ANIMALS BECOME EXTINCT?</p>
+
+<p class="out">Extinction sometimes evolution,<a href="#Page_221">221</a>; over-specialization as a
+cause for extinction,<a href="#Page_222">222</a>; extinction sometimes unaccountable,
+223; man's capability for harm small in the past,<a href="#Page_224">224</a>;
+old theories of great convulsions,<a href="#Page_226">226</a>; changes in nature slow,
+227; the case of Lingula,<a href="#Page_228">228</a>; local extermination,<a href="#Page_229">229</a>; the
+Moas and the Great Auk,<a href="#Page_232">232</a>; the case of large animals,
+233; inter-dependence of living beings,<a href="#Page_234">234</a>; coyotes and
+fruit,<a href="#Page_236">236</a>; Shaler on the Miocene flora of Europe,<a href="#Page_236">236</a>; man's
+desire for knowledge,<a href="#Page_238">238</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="out"><span class="smcap">Index</span>,<a href="#Page_243">243</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<h2>NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<p>The original drawings, made especially for this book,
+are by Charles R. Knight and James M. Gleeson,
+under the direction of Mr. Knight. The fact that the
+originals of these drawings have been presented to and
+accepted by the United States National Museum is
+evidence of their scientific value. Mr. Knight has
+been commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, the
+United States National Museum, and the New York
+Museum of Natural History, to do their most important
+pictures of extinct animals. He is the one
+modern artist who can picture prehistoric animals
+with artistic charm of presentation as well as with full
+scientific accuracy. In this instance, the author has
+personally superintended the artist's work, so that it is
+as correct in every respect as present knowledge makes
+possible. Of the minor illustrations, some are by Mr.
+Bruce Horsfall, an artist attached to the staff of the
+New York Museum of Natural History, and all have
+been drawn with the help of and under the author's
+supervision.</p>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Phororhacos, a Patagonian Giant of the Miocene <br /><i>From a Drawing by Charles R. Knight</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>Frontispiece</i></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdrfirst">Fig.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tdrfirst">Page</td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Diplomystus, an Ancient Member of the Shad Family <br /><i>From the fish-bed at Green River, Wyoming. From a specimen in the United States National Museum.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">2.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Bryozoa, from the Shore of the Devonian Sea that Covered Eastern New York <br /><i>From a specimen in Yale University Museum, prepared by Dr. Beecher.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">3.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Skeleton of a Radiolarian Very Greatly Enlarged</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">4.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Cephalaspis and Loricaria, an Ancient and a Modern Armored Fish</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">5.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Pterichthys, the Wing Fish</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">6.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Where a Dinosaur Sat Down</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">7.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Footprints of Dinosaurs on the Brownstone of the Connecticut Valley <br /><i>From a slab in the museum of Amherst College.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">8.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Track of a Three-toed Dinosaur</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">9.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">A Great Sea Lizard, <br /><i>Tylosaurus Dyspelor From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">10.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Jaw of a Mosasaur, Showing the Joint that Increased the Swallowing Capacity of that Reptile</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">11.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Koch's Hydrarchus. Composed of Portions of the Skeletons of Several Zeuglodons</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">12.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">A Tooth of Zeuglodon, One of the "Yoke Teeth," from which it derives the name</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">13.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Arch&aelig;opteryx, the Earliest Known Bird <br /><i>From the specimen in the Berlin Museum.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">14.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Nature's Four Methods of Making a Wing: Bat, Pteryodactyl, Arch&aelig;opteryx, and Modern Bird</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">15.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Young Hoactzins</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">16.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Hesperornis, the Great Toothed Diver <br /><i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">17.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Arch&aelig;opteryx <br /><i>As Restored by Mr. Pycraft.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">18.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Thespesius, a Common Herbivorous Dinosaur of the Cretaceous <br /><i>From a drawing by Charles R. Knight.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">19.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">A Hind Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, the Largest of the Dinosaurs</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">20.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">A Single Vertebra of Brontosaurus</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">21.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Moloch, a Modern Lizard that Surpasses the Stegosaurs in all but Size <br /><i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">22.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Skeleton of Triceratops</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">23.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Horned Ceratosaurus, a Carnivorous Dinosaur <br /><i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">24.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Stegosaurus, an Armored Dinosaur of the Jurassic <br /><i>From a drawing by Charles R. Knight.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">25.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Skull of Ceratosaurus <br /><i>From a specimen in the United States National Museum.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">26.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Triceratops, He of the Three-horned Face <br /><i>From a statuette by Charles R. Knight.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">27.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">A Hint of Buried Treasures</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">28.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Relics of the Moa</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">29.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Eggs of Feathered Giants, &AElig;pyornis, Ostrich, Moa, Compared with a Hen's Egg</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">30.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Skull of Phororhacos Compared with that of the Race-horse Lexington</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">31.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Leg of a Horse Compared with that of the Giant Moa</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">32.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Three Giants, Phororhacos, Moa, Ostrich</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">33.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Skeleton of the Modern Horse and of His Eocene Ancestor</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">34.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Development of the Horse</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">35.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Mammoth <br /><i>From a drawing by Charles R. Knight.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">36.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Skeleton of the Mammoth in the Royal Museum of St. Petersburg</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">37.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Mammoth <br /><i>As engraved by a Primitive Artist on a Piece of Mammoth-Tusk.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">38.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">Tooth of Mastodon and of Mammoth</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">39.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Missourium of Koch <br /><i>From a Tracing of the Figure Illustrating Koch's Description.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">40.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Mastodon <br /><i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></td>
+  </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">41.</td>
+    <td class="tdl">The Lenape Stone, Reduced</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<h2><a id="INTRODUCTORY_AND_EXPLANATORY"></a><i>INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY</i></h2>
+
+<p><i>At the present time the interest in the ancient
+life of this earth is greater than ever before, and
+very considerable sums of money are being expended
+to dispatch carefully planned expeditions
+to various parts of the world systematically to
+gather the fossil remains of the animals of the
+past. That this interest is not merely confined
+to a few scientific men, but is shared by the general
+public, is shown by the numerous articles,
+including many telegrams, in the columns of the
+daily papers. The object of this book is to tell
+some of the interesting facts concerning a few of
+the better known or more remarkable of these
+extinct inhabitants of the ancient world; also,
+if possible, to ease the strain on these venerable
+animals, caused by stretching them so often beyond
+their due proportions.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The book is admittedly somewhat on the lines<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span>
+of Mr. Hutchinson's "Extinct Monsters" and
+"Creatures of Other Days," but it is hoped that
+it may be considered with books as with boats,
+a good plan to build after a good model. The
+information scattered through these pages has
+been derived from varied sources; some has of
+necessity been taken from standard books, a
+part has been gathered in the course of museum
+work and official correspondence; for much, the
+author is indebted to his personal friends, and
+for a part, he is under obligations to friends he
+has never met, who have kindly responded to his
+inquiries. The endeavor has been conscientiously
+made to exclude all misinformation; it is, nevertheless,
+entirely probable that some mistakes may
+have crept in, and due apology for these is hereby
+made beforehand.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The author expects to be taken to task for
+the use of scientific names, and the reader may
+perhaps sympathize with the old lady who said
+that the discovery of all these strange animals
+did not surprise her so much as the fact that
+anyone should know their names when they were
+found. The real trouble is that there are no
+common names for these animals. Then, too,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span>
+people who call for easier names do not stop to
+reflect that, in many cases, the scientific names are
+no harder than others, simply less familiar, and,
+when domesticated, they cease to be hard: witness
+mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, boa constrictor,
+all of which are scientific names. And
+if, for example, we were to call the Hyracotherium
+a Hyrax beast it would not be a name,
+but a description, and not a bit more intelligible.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Again, it is impossible to indicate the period
+at which these creatures lived without using the
+scientific term for it&mdash;Jurassic, Eocene, Pliocene,
+as the case may be&mdash;because there is no
+other way of doing it.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Some readers will doubtless feel disappointed
+because they are not told how many years ago
+these animals lived. The question is often asked&mdash;How
+long ago did this or that animal live? But
+when the least estimate puts the age of the earth
+at only 10,000,000 years, while the longest makes
+it 6,000,000,000, it does seem as if it were hardly
+worth while to name any figures. Even when
+we get well toward the present period we find
+the time that has elapsed since the beginning of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span>
+the Jurassic, when the Dinosaurs held carnival,
+variously put at from 15,000,000 to 6,000,000
+years; while from the beginning of the Eocene,
+when the mammals began to gain the supremacy,
+until now, the figures vary from 3,000,000
+to 5,000,000 years. So the question of age will
+be left for the reader to settle to his or her satisfaction.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The restorations of extinct animals may be
+considered as giving as accurate representations
+of these creatures as it is possible to make; they
+were either drawn by Mr. Knight, whose name
+is guarantee that they are of the highest quality,
+or by Mr. Gleeson, with the aid of Mr. Knight's
+criticism. That they are infallibly correct is out
+of the question; for, as Dr. Woodward writes
+in the preface to "Extinct Monsters," "restorations
+are ever liable to emendation, and the present
+... will certainly prove no exception
+to the rule." As a striking instance of this, it
+was found necessary at the last moment to
+change the figure of Hesperornis, the original
+life-like portrait proving to be incorrect in
+attitude, a fact that would have long escaped
+detection but for the Pan-American Exposition.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span>
+The connection between the two is explained on
+page 76. However, the reader may rest assured
+that these restorations are infinitely more
+nearly correct than many figures of living
+animals that have appeared within the last
+twenty-five years, and are even now doing
+duty.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The endeavor has been made to indicate, at the
+end of each chapter, the museums in which the
+best examples of the animals described may be
+seen, and also some book or article in which further
+information may be obtained. As this book
+is intended for the general reader, references to
+purely technical articles have, so far as possible,
+been avoided, and none in foreign languages
+mentioned.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>For important works of reference on the
+subject of paleontology, the reader may consult
+"A Manual of Paleontology," by Alleyne Nicholson
+and R. Lydekker, a work in two volumes
+dealing with invertebrates, vertebrates, and
+plants, or "A Text-Book of Paleontology," by
+Karl von Zittel, English edition, only the first
+volume of which has so far been published. An
+admirable book on the vertebrates is "Outlines<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xx">[xx]</a></span>
+of Vertebrate Paleontology," by Arthur Smith
+Woodward. It is to be understood that these
+are not at all "popular" in their scope, but
+intended for students who are already well
+advanced in the study of zo&ouml;logy.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p class="h2">ANIMALS OF THE PAST</p>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">FOSSILS, AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED</p>
+
+<div class="inset16">
+<p>"<i>How of a thousand snakes each one<br />
+Was changed into a coil of stone.</i>"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fossils are the remains, or even the indications,
+of animals and plants that have, through
+natural agencies, been buried in the earth and
+preserved for long periods of time. This may
+seem a rather meagre definition, but it is a difficult
+matter to frame one that will be at once
+brief, exact, and comprehensive; fossils are not
+necessarily the remains of extinct animals or
+plants, neither are they, of necessity, objects
+that have become petrified or turned into stone.</p>
+
+<p>Bones of the Great Auk and Rytina, which
+are quite extinct, would hardly be considered
+as fossils; while the bones of many species of
+animals, still living, would properly come in
+that category, having long ago been buried by
+natural causes and often been changed into<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+stone. And yet it is not essential for a specimen
+to have had its animal matter replaced by
+some mineral in order that it may be classed as
+a fossil, for the Siberian Mammoths, found entombed
+in ice, are very properly spoken of as
+fossils, although the flesh of at least one of these
+animals was so fresh that it was eaten. Likewise
+the mammoth tusks brought to market
+are termed fossil-ivory, although differing but
+little from the tusks of modern elephants.</p>
+
+<p>Many fossils indeed merit their popular appellation
+of petrifactions, because they have
+been changed into stone by the slow removal
+of the animal or vegetable matter present and
+its replacement by some mineral, usually silica
+or some form of lime. But it is necessary to
+include 'indications of plants or animals' in
+the above definition because some of the best
+fossils may be merely impressions of plants or
+animals and no portion of the objects themselves,
+and yet, as we shall see, some of our
+most important information has been gathered
+from these same imprints.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all our knowledge of the plants that
+flourished in the past is based on the impressions<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+of their leaves left on the soft mud or
+smooth sand that later on hardened into enduring
+stone. Such, too, are the trails of creeping
+and crawling things, casts of the burrows of
+worms and the many footprints of the reptiles,
+great and small, that crept along the shore or
+stalked beside the waters of the ancient seas.
+The creatures themselves have passed away,
+their massive bones even are lost, but the prints
+of their feet are as plain to-day as when they
+were first made.</p>
+
+<p>Many a crustacean, too, is known solely or
+mostly by the cast of its shell, the hard parts
+having completely vanished, and the existence
+of birds in some formations is revealed merely
+by the casts of their eggs; and these natural
+casts must be included in the category of
+fossils.</p>
+
+<p>Impressions of vertebrates may, indeed, be
+almost as good as actual skeletons, as in the
+case of some fishes, where the fine mud in
+which they were buried has become changed
+to a rock, rivalling porcelain in texture; the
+bones have either dissolved away or shattered
+into dust at the splitting of the rock, but the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+imprint of each little fin-ray and every threadlike
+bone is as clearly defined as it would have
+been in a freshly prepared skeleton. So fine,
+indeed, may have been the mud, and so quiet
+for the time being the waters of the ancient
+sea or lake, that not only have prints of bones
+and leaves been found, but those of feathers
+and of the skin of some reptiles, and even of
+such soft and delicate objects as jelly fishes.
+But for these we should have little positive
+knowledge of the outward appearance of the
+creatures of the past, and to them we are occasionally
+indebted for the solution of some
+moot point in their anatomy.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may possibly wonder why it is
+that fossils are not more abundant; why, of the
+vast majority of animals that have dwelt upon
+the earth since it became fit for the habitation
+of living beings, not a trace remains. This,
+too, when some objects&mdash;the tusks of the Mammoth,
+for example&mdash;have been sufficiently well
+preserved to form staple articles of commerce
+at the present time, so that the carved handle
+of my lady's parasol may have formed part of
+some animal that flourished at the very dawn
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+of the human race, and been gazed upon by
+her grandfather a thousand times removed.
+The answer to this query is that, unless the conditions
+were such as to preserve at least the
+hard parts of any creature from immediate decay,
+there was small probability of its becoming
+fossilized. These conditions are that the
+objects must be protected from the air, and,
+practically, the only way that this happens in
+nature is by having them covered with water,
+or at least buried in wet ground.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_030.jpg" width="400" height="188"  alt="" />
+Fig. 1.&mdash;Diplomystus, an Ancient Member of the Shad Family. From the Fishbed
+at Green River, Wyoming.
+<br />
+<i>From a specimen in the United States National Museum.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>If an animal dies on dry land, where its bones
+lie exposed to the summer's sun and rain and
+the winter's frost and snow, it does not take
+these destructive agencies long to reduce the
+bones to powder; in the rare event of a climate
+devoid of rain, mere changes of temperature,
+by producing expansion and contraction,
+will sooner or later cause a bone to crack and
+crumble.</p>
+
+<p>Usually, too, the work of the elements is
+aided by that of animals and plants. Every
+one has seen a dog make way with a pretty
+good-sized bone, and the Hyena has still greater
+capabilities in that line; and ever since vertebrate
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+life began there have been carnivorous
+animals of some kind to play the r&ocirc;le of bone-destroyers.
+Even were there no carnivores,
+there were probably then, as now, rats and
+mice a-plenty, and few suspect the havoc small
+rodents may play with a bone for the grease it
+contains, or merely for the sake of exercising
+their teeth. Now and then we come upon a
+fossil bone, long since turned into stone, on
+which are the marks of the little cutting teeth
+of field mice, put there long, long ago, and yet
+looking as fresh as if made only last week.
+These little beasts, however, are indirect rather
+than direct agents in the destruction of bones
+by gnawing off the outer layers, and thus permitting
+the more ready entrance of air and
+water. Plants, as a rule, begin their work after
+an object has become partly or entirely buried
+in the soil, when the tiny rootlets find their
+way into fissures, and, expanding as they grow,
+act like so many little wedges to force it
+asunder.</p>
+
+<p>Thus on dry land there is small opportunity
+for a bone to become a fossil; but, if a creature
+so perishes that its body is swept into the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+ocean or one of its estuaries, settles to the
+muddy bottom of a lake or is caught on the
+sandy shoals of some river, the chances are
+good that its bones will be preserved. They
+are poorest in the ocean, for unless the body
+drifts far out and settles down in quiet waters,
+the waves pound the bones to pieces with stones
+or scour them away with sand, while marine
+worms may pierce them with burrows, or
+echinoderms cut holes for their habitations;
+there are more enemies to a bone than one
+might imagine.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose, however, that some animal has
+sunk in the depths of a quiet lake, where the
+wash of the waves upon the shore wears the
+sand or rock into mud so fine that it floats out
+into still water and settles there as gently as
+dew upon the grass. Little by little the bones
+are covered by a deposit that fills every groove
+and pore, preserving the mark of every ridge
+and furrow; and while this may take long, it
+is merely a matter of time and favorable circumstance
+to bury the bones as deeply as one
+might wish. Scarce a reader of these lines but
+at some time has cast anchor in some quiet<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+pond and pulled it up, thickly covered with
+sticky mud, whose existence would hardly be
+suspected from the sparkling waters and pebbly
+shores. If, instead of a lake, our animal had
+gone to the bottom of some estuary into which
+poured a river turbid with mud, the process of
+entombment would have been still more rapid,
+while, had the creature been engulfed in quicksand,
+it would have been the quickest method
+of all; and just such accidents did take place
+in the early days of the earth as well as now.
+At least two examples of the great Dinosaur
+Thespesius have been found with the bones all
+in place, the thigh bones still in their sockets
+and the ossified tendons running along the
+backbone as they did in life. This would
+hardly have happened had not the body been
+surrounded and supported so that every part
+was held in place and not crushed, and it is
+difficult to see any better agency for this than
+burial in quicksand.</p>
+
+<p>If such an event as we have been supposing
+took place in a part of the globe where the
+land was gradually sinking&mdash;and the crust of
+the earth is ever rising and falling&mdash;the mud<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+and sand would keep on accumulating until
+an enormously thick layer was formed. The
+lime or silica contained in the water would
+tend to cement the particles of mud and grains
+of sand into a solid mass, while the process
+would be aided by the pressure of the overlying
+sediment, the heat created by this pressure,
+and that derived from the earth beneath.
+During this process the animal matter of bones
+or other objects would disappear and its place
+be taken by lime or silica, and thus would be
+formed a layer of rock containing fossils. The
+exact manner in which this replacement is
+effected and in which the chemical and mechanical
+changes occur is very far from being
+definitely known&mdash;especially as the process of
+"fossilization" must at times have been very
+complicated.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of fossil wood greater changes
+have taken place than in the fossilization of
+bone, for there is not merely an infiltration
+of the specimen but a complete replacement of
+the original vegetable by mineral matter, the
+interior of the cells being first filled with silica
+and their walls replaced later on. So completely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+and minutely may this change occur
+that under the microscope the very cellular
+structure of the wood is visible, and as this
+varies according to the species, it is possible,
+by microscopical examination, to determine
+the relationship of trees in cases where nothing
+but fragments of the trunk remain.</p>
+
+<p>The process of fossilization is at best a slow
+one, and soft substances such as flesh, or even
+horn, decay too rapidly for it to take place, so
+that all accounts of petrified bodies, human or
+otherwise, are either based on deliberate frauds
+or are the result of a very erroneous misinterpretation
+of facts. That the impression or
+cast of a body <i>might</i> be formed in nature,
+somewhat as casts have been made of those
+who perished at Pompeii, is true; but, so far, no
+authentic case of the kind has come to light,
+and the reader is quite justified in disbelieving
+any report of "a petrified man."</p>
+
+<p>Natural casts of such hard bodies as shells
+are common, formed by the dissolving away of
+the original shell after it had become enclosed
+in mud, or even after this had changed to
+stone, and the filling up of this space by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>filtering in of water charged with lime or silica,
+which is there deposited, often in crystalline
+form. In this way, too, are formed casts
+of eggs of reptiles and birds, so perfect that it
+is possible to form a pretty accurate opinion
+as to the group to which they belong.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_038.jpg" width="400" height="212"  alt="" />
+Fig. 2.&mdash;Bryozoa from the Shore of the Devonian Sea that Covered Eastern
+New York.
+<br />
+<i>From a specimen in Yale University Museum, prepared by Dr. Beecher.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sometimes it happens that shells or other
+small objects imbedded in limestone have been
+dissolved and replaced by silica, and in such
+cases it is possible to eat away the enveloping
+rock with acid and leave the silicified casts.
+By this method specimens of shells, corals,
+and bryozoans are obtained of almost lace-like
+delicacy, and as perfect as if only yesterday
+gathered at the sea-shore. Casts of the interior
+of shells, showing many details of structure,
+are common, and anyone who has seen clams
+dug will understand how they are formed
+by the entrance of mud into the empty shell.</p>
+
+<p>Casts of the kernels of nuts are formed in
+much the same way, and Professor E. H. Barbour
+has thus described the probable manner
+in which this was done. When the nuts were
+dropped into the water of the ancient lake the
+kernel rotted away, but the shell, being tough<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+and hard, would probably last for years under
+favorable circumstances. Throughout the
+marls and clays of the Bad Lands (of South
+Dakota) there is a large amount of potash.
+This is dissolved by water, and then acts upon
+quartz, carrying it away in solution. This
+would find its way by infiltration into the interior
+of the nut. At the same time with this
+process, carrying lime carbonate in solution
+was going on, so that doubtless the stone kernels,
+consisting of pretty nearly equal parts of
+lime and silica, were deposited within the nuts.
+These kernels, of course, became hard and
+flinty in time, and capable of resisting almost
+any amount of weathering. Not so the organic
+shell; this eventually would decay away,
+and so leave the filling or kernel of chalcedony
+and lime.<a id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Right here is the weak spot in Professor Barbour's explanation,
+and an illustration of our lack of knowledge. For
+it is difficult to see why the more enduring husk should not have
+become mineralized equally with the cavity within.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>"Fossil leaves" are nothing but fine casts,
+made in natural moulds, and all have seen
+the first stages in their formation as they
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>watched the leaves sailing to the ground to be
+covered by mud or sand at the next rain, or
+dropping into the water, where sooner or later
+they sink, as we may see them at the bottom
+of any quiet woodland spring.</p>
+
+<p>Impressions of leaves are among the early
+examples of color-printing, for they are frequently
+of a darker, or even different, tint from
+that of the surrounding rock, this being caused
+by the carbonization of vegetable matter or to
+its action on iron that may have been present
+in the soil or water. Besides complete mineralization,
+or petrifaction, there are numerous
+cases of incomplete or semi-fossilization, where
+modern objects, still retaining their phosphate
+of lime and some animal matter even, are
+found buried in rock. This takes place when
+water containing carbonate of lime, silica, or
+sometimes iron, flows over beds of sand, cementing
+the grains into solid but not dense
+rock, and at the same time penetrating and
+uniting with it such things as chance to be buried.
+In this way was formed the "fossil man"
+of Guadeloupe, West Indies, a skeleton of a
+modern Carib lying in recent concretionary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+limestone, together with shells of existing species
+and fragments of pottery. In a similar way,
+too, human remains in parts of Florida have,
+through the infiltration of water charged with
+iron, become partially converted into limonite
+iron ore; and yet we know that these bones
+have been buried within quite recent times.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes we hear of springs or waters that
+"turn things into stone," but these tales are
+quite incorrect. Waters there are, like the
+celebrated hot springs of Auvergne, France,
+containing so much carbonate of lime in solution
+that it is readily deposited on objects
+placed therein, coating them more or less
+thickly, according to the length of time they
+are allowed to remain. This, however, is merely
+an encrustation, not extending into the objects.
+In a similar way the precipitation of
+solid material from waters of this description
+forms the porous rock known as tufa, and this
+often encloses moss, twigs, and other substances
+that are in no way to be classed with fossils.</p>
+
+<p>But some streams, flowing over limestone
+rocks, take up considerable carbonate of lime,
+and this may be deposited in water-soaked logs,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+replacing more or less of the woody tissue and
+thus really partially changing the wood into
+stone.</p>
+
+<p>The very rocks themselves may consist largely
+of fossils; chalk, for example, is mainly made
+up of the disintegrated shells of simple marine
+animals called foraminifers, and the beautiful
+flint-like "skeletons" of other small creatures
+termed radiolarians, minute as they are, have
+contributed extensively to the formation of
+some strata.</p>
+
+<p>Even after an object has become fossilized,
+it is far from certain that it will remain in good
+condition until found, while the chance of its
+being found at all is exceedingly small. When
+we remember that it is only here and there
+that nature has made the contents of the rocks
+accessible by turning the strata on edge, heaving
+them into cliffs or furrowing them with
+valleys and canyons, we realize what a vast
+number of pages of the fossil record must
+remain not only unread, but unseen. The
+wonder is, not that we know so little of
+the history of the past, but that we have
+learned so much, for not only is nature careless<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+in keeping the records&mdash;preserving them
+mostly in scattered fragments&mdash;but after they
+have been laid away and sealed up in the rocks
+they are subject to many accidents. Some
+specimens get badly flattened by the weight
+of subsequently deposited strata, others are
+cracked and twisted by the movements of the
+rocks during periods of upheaval or subsidence,
+and when at last they are brought to the surface,
+the same sun and rain, snow and frost,
+from which they once escaped, are ready to
+renew the attack and crumble even the hard
+stone to fragments. Such, very briefly, are
+some of the methods by which fossils may be
+formed, such are some of the accidents by
+which they may be destroyed; but this description
+must be taken as a mere outline and as
+applying mainly to vertebrates, or backboned
+animals, since it is with them that we shall have
+to deal. It may, however, show why it is that
+fossils are not more plentiful, why we have
+mere hints of the existence of many animals,
+and why myriads of creatures may have flourished
+and passed away without so much as
+leaving a trace of their presence behind.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>A very valuable and interesting article by Dr. Charles
+A. White, entitled "The Relation of Biology to Geological
+Investigation," will be found in the Report of the
+United States National Museum for 1892. This comprises
+a series of essays on the nature and scientific uses
+of fossil remains, their origin, relative chronological
+value and other questions pertaining to them. The United
+States National Museum has published a pamphlet, part
+K, Bulletin 39, containing directions for collecting and
+preparing fossils, by Charles Schuchert; and another,
+part B, Bulletin 39, collecting recent and fossil plants,
+by F. H. Knowlton.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_046.jpg" width="400" height="409"  alt="" />
+Fig. 3.&mdash;Skeleton of a Radiolarian Very Greatly Enlarged.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATES</p>
+
+<div class="inset16">
+<p>
+"<i>We are the ancients of the earth<br />
+And in the morning of the times.</i>"<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a universal, and perfectly natural, desire
+for information, which in ourselves we term
+thirst for knowledge and in others call curiosity,
+that makes mankind desire to know how everything
+began and causes much speculation as to
+how it all will end. This may take the form
+of a wish to know how a millionaire made his
+first ten cents, or it may lead to the questions&mdash;What
+is the oldest animal? or, What is the
+first known member of the great group of backboned
+animals at whose head man has placed
+himself? and, What did this, our primeval and
+many-times-removed ancestor, look like? The
+question is one that has ever been full of interest
+for naturalists, and Nature has been interrogated
+in various ways in the hope that she<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+might be persuaded to yield a satisfactory answer.
+The most direct way has been that of
+tracing back the history of animal life by means
+of fossil remains, but beyond a certain point
+this method cannot go, since, for reasons stated
+in various places in these pages, the soft
+bodies of primitive animals are not preserved.
+To supplement this work, the embryologist has
+studied the early stages of animals, as their development
+throws a side-light on their past
+history. And, finally, there is the study of the
+varied forms of invertebrates, some of which
+have proved to be like vertebrates in part of
+their structure, while others have been revealed
+as vertebrates in disguise. So far these various
+methods have yielded various answers, or the
+replies, like those of the Delphic Oracle, have
+been variously interpreted so that vertebrates
+are considered by some to have descended from
+the worms, while others have found their beginnings
+in some animal allied to the King Crab.</p>
+
+<p>Every student of genealogy knows only too
+well how difficult a matter it is to trace a family
+pedigree back a few centuries, how soon the
+family names become changed, the line of descent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+obscure, and how soon gaps appear whose
+filling in requires much patient research. How
+much more difficult must it be, then, to trace
+the pedigree of a race that extends, not over
+centuries, but thousands of centuries; how wide
+must be some of the gaps, how very different
+may the founders of the family be from their
+descendants! The words old and ancient that
+we use so often in speaking of fossils appeal to
+us somewhat vaguely, for we speak of the ancient
+civilizations of Greece and Rome, and call
+a family old that can show a pedigree running
+back four or five hundred years, when such as
+these are but affairs of yesterday compared
+with even recent fossils.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps we may better appreciate the meaning
+of these words by recalling that, since the
+dawn of vertebrate life, sufficient of the earth's
+surface has been worn away and washed into
+the sea to form, were the strata piled directly
+one upon the other, fifteen or twenty miles of
+rock. This, of course, is the sum total of sedimentary
+rocks, for such a thickness as this is not
+to be found at any one locality; because, during
+the various ups and downs that this world of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+ours has met with, those portions that chanced
+to be out of water would receive no deposit of
+mud or sand, and hence bear no corresponding
+stratum of rock. The reader may think that
+there is a great deal of difference between fifteen
+and twenty miles, but this liberal margin
+is due to the difficulty of measuring the thickness
+of the rocks, and in Europe the sum of
+the measurable strata is much greater than in
+North America.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest traces of animal life are found
+deeper still, beneath something like eighteen
+to twenty-five miles of rock, while below this
+level are the strata in which dwelt the earliest
+living things, organisms so small and simple
+that no trace of their existence has been left,
+and we infer that they were there because any
+given group starts in a modest way with small
+and simple individuals.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom, then, of twenty miles of rocks
+the seeker for the progenitor of the great family
+of backboned animals finds the scant remains
+of fish-like animals that the cautious
+naturalist, who is much given to "hedging,"
+terms, not vertebrates, but prevertebrates or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+the forerunners of backboned animals. The
+earliest of these consist of small bony plates,
+and traces of a cartilaginous backbone from
+the Lower Silurian of Colorado, believed to
+represent relatives of Chim&aelig;ra and species related
+to those better-known forms Holoptychius
+and Osteolepis, which occur in higher
+strata. There are certainly indications of vertebrate
+life, but the remains are so imperfect
+that little more can be said regarding them,
+and this is also true of the small conical teeth
+which occur in the Lower Silurian of St. Petersburg,
+and are thought to be the teeth of
+some animal like the lamprey.</p>
+
+<p>A little higher up in the rocks, though not
+in the scale of life, in the Lower Old Red Sandstone
+of England, are found more numerous
+and better preserved specimens of another little
+fish-like creature, rarely if ever exceeding
+two inches in length, and also related (probably)
+to the hag-fishes and lampreys that live
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>These early vertebrates are not only small,
+but they were cartilaginous, so that it was essential
+for their preservation that they should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+be buried in soft mud as soon as possible after
+death. Even if this took place they were later
+on submitted to the pressure of some miles of
+overlying rock until, in some cases, their remains
+have been pressed out thinner than a
+sheet of paper, and so thoroughly incorporated
+into the surrounding stone that it is no easy
+matter to trace their shadowy outlines. With
+such drawbacks as these to contend with, it can
+scarcely be wondered at that, while some naturalists
+believe these little creatures to be related
+to the lamprey, others consider that they belong
+to a perfectly distinct group of animals, and
+others still think it possible that they may be
+the larval or early stages of larger and better-developed
+forms.</p>
+
+<p>Still higher up we come upon the abundant
+remains of numerous small fish-like animals,
+more or less completely clad in bony armor,
+indicating that they lived in troublous times
+when there was literally a fight for existence
+and only such as were well armed or well
+protected could hope to survive. A parallel
+case exists to-day in some of the rivers of South
+America, where the little cat-fishes would pos<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>sibly
+be eaten out of existence but for the fact
+that they are covered&mdash;some of them very
+completely&mdash;with plate-armor that enables
+them to defy their enemies, or renders them
+such poor eating as not to be worth the taking.
+The arrangement of the plates or scales in the
+living Loricaria is very suggestive of the series
+of bony rings covering the body of the ancient
+Cephalaspis, only the latter, so far as we know,
+had no side-fins; but the creatures are in no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+wise related, and the similarity is in appearance
+only.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_053.jpg" width="400" height="300"  alt="" />
+Fig. 4.&mdash;Cephalaspis and Loricaria, an Ancient and a
+Modern Armored Fish.
+</div>
+
+<p>Pterichthys, the wing fish, was another small,
+quaint, armor-clad creature, whose fossilized remains
+were taken for those of a crab, and once
+described as belonging to a beetle. Certainly
+the buckler of this fish, which is the part most
+often preserved, with its jointed, bony arms,
+looks to the untrained eye far more like some
+strange crustacean than a fish, and even naturalists
+have pictured the animal as crawling
+over the bare sands by means of those same
+arms. These fishes and their allies were once
+the dominant type of life, and must have
+abounded in favored localities, for in places are
+great deposits of their protective shields jumbled
+together in a confused mass, and, save
+that they have hardened into stone, lying just
+as they were washed up on the ancient beach
+ages ago. How abundant they were may be
+gathered from the fact that it is believed their
+bodies helped consolidate portions of the strata
+of the English Old Red Sandstone. Says Mr.
+Hutchinson, speaking of the Caithness Flagstones,
+"They owe their peculiar tenacity and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+durability to the dead fishes that rotted in their
+midst while yet they were only soft mud.
+For just as a plaster cast boiled in oil becomes
+thereby denser and more durable, so the oily
+and other matter coming from decomposing
+fish operated on the surrounding sand or mud
+so as to make it more compact."</p>
+
+<p>It may not be easy to explain how it came
+to pass that fishes dwelling in salt water, as
+these undoubtedly did, were thus deposited in
+great numbers, but we may now and then see
+how deposits of fresh-water fishes may have
+been formed. When rivers flowing through a
+stretch of level country are swollen during the
+spring floods, they overflow their banks, often
+carrying along large numbers of fishes. As the
+water subsides these may be caught in shallow
+pools that soon dry up, leaving the fishes to
+perish, and every year the Illinois game association
+rescues from the "back waters" quantities
+of bass that would otherwise be lost.
+Mr. F. S. Webster has recorded an instance
+that came under his observation in Texas,
+where thousands of gar pikes, trapped in a lake
+formed by an overflow of the Rio Grande, had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+been, by the drying up of this lake, penned into
+a pool about seventy-five feet long by twenty-five
+feet wide. The fish were literally packed
+together like sardines, layer upon layer, and a
+shot fired into the pool would set the entire
+mass in motion, the larger gars as they dashed
+about casting the smaller fry into the air, a
+score at a time. Mr. Webster estimates that
+there must have been not less than 700 or 800
+fish in the pool, from a foot and a half up to
+seven feet in length, every one of which perished
+a little later. In addition to the fish in
+the pond, hundreds of those that had died previously
+lay about in every direction, and one
+can readily imagine what a fish-bed this would
+have made had the occurrence taken place in
+the past.</p>
+
+<p>From the better-preserved specimens that do
+now and then turn up, we are able to obtain a
+very exact idea of the construction of the bony
+cuirass by which Pterichthys and its American
+cousin were protected, and to make a pretty
+accurate reconstruction of the entire animal.
+These primitive fishes had mouths, for eating is
+a necessity; but these mouths were not associated<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+with true jaws, for the two do not, as might
+be supposed, necessarily go together. Neither
+did these animals possess hard backbones, and,
+while Pterichthys and its relatives had arms or
+fins, the hard parts of these were not on the
+inside but on the outside, so that the limb was
+more like the leg of a crab than the fin of a
+fish; and this is among the reasons why some
+naturalists have been led to conclude that vertebrates
+may have developed from crustaceans.
+Pteraspis, another of these little armored prevertebrates,
+had a less complicated covering,
+and looked very much like a small fish with its
+fore parts caught in an elongate clam-shell.</p>
+
+<p>The fishes that we have so far been considering&mdash;orphans
+of the past they might be termed,
+as they have no living relatives&mdash;were little fellows;
+but their immediate successors, preserved
+in the Devonian strata, particularly of North
+America, were the giants of those days, termed,
+from their size and presumably fierce appearance,
+Titantichthys and Dinichthys, and are related
+to a fish, <i>Ceratodus</i>, still living in Australia.</p>
+
+<p>We know practically nothing of the external
+appearance of these fishes, great and fierce<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+though they may have been, with powerful
+jaws and armored heads, for they had no bony
+skeleton&mdash;as if they devoted their energies to
+preying upon their neighbors rather than to internal
+improvements. They attained a length
+of ten to eighteen feet, with a gape, in the large
+species called Titanichthys, of four feet, and
+such a fish might well be capable of devouring
+anything known to have lived at that early
+date.</p>
+
+<p>Succeeding these, in Carboniferous times,
+came a host of shark-like creatures known
+mainly from their teeth and spines, for their
+skeletons were of cartilage, and belonging to
+types that have mostly perished, giving place
+to others better adapted to the changed conditions
+wrought by time. Almost the only living
+relative of these early fishes is a little shark,
+known as the Port Jackson Shark, living in
+Australian waters. Like the old sharks, this
+one has a spine in front of his back fins, and, like
+them, he fortunately has a mouthful of diversely
+shaped teeth; fortunately, because through their
+aid we are enabled to form some idea of the
+manner in which some of the teeth found scattered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+through the rocks were arranged. For
+the teeth were not planted in sockets, as they
+are in higher animals, but simply rested on the
+jaws, from which they readily became detached
+when decomposition set in after death. To
+complicate matters, the teeth in different parts
+of the jaws were often so unlike one another
+that when found separately they would hardly
+be suspected of having belonged to the same
+animal. Besides teeth these fishes, for purposes
+of offence and defence, were usually armed
+with spines, sometimes of considerable size and
+strength, and often elaborately grooved and
+sculptured. As the soft parts perished the
+teeth and spines were left to be scattered by
+waves and currents, a tooth here, another there,
+and a spine somewhere else; so it has often
+happened that, being found separately, two or
+three quite different names have been given to
+one and the same animal. Now and then some
+specimen comes to light that escaped the
+thousand and one accidents to which such
+things were exposed, and that not only shows
+the teeth and spines but the faint imprint of
+the body and fins as well. And from such rare<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+examples we learn just what teeth and spines
+go with one another, and sometimes find that
+one fish has received names enough for an entire
+school.</p>
+
+<p>These ancient sharks were not the large and
+powerful fishes that we have to-day&mdash;these
+came upon the scene later&mdash;but mostly fishes
+of small size, and, as indicated by their spines,
+fitted quite as much for defence as offence.
+Their rise was rapid, and in their turn they
+became the masters of the world, spreading
+in great numbers through the waters that covered
+the face of the earth; but their supremacy
+was of short duration, for they declined in
+numbers even during the Carboniferous Period,
+and later dwindled almost to extinction. And
+while sharks again increased, they never reached
+their former abundance, and the species that
+arose were swift, predatory forms, better fitted
+for the struggle for existence.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>The early fishes make but little show in a museum,
+both on account of their small size and the conditions
+under which they have been preserved. The Museum of
+Comparative Zo&ouml;logy has a large collection of these
+ancient vertebrates, and there is a considerable number of
+fine teeth and spines of Carboniferous sharks in the
+United States National Museum.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Hugh Miller's "The Old Red Sandstone" contains
+some charming descriptions of his discoveries of Pterichthys
+and related forms, and this book will ever remain a
+classic.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_061.jpg" width="400" height="149"  alt="" />
+Fig. 5.&mdash;Pterichthys, the Wing Fish.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST</p>
+
+<div class="inset18">
+<p>
+"<i>The weird palimpsest, old and vast,<br />
+Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past.</i>"<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Rev. H. N. Hutchinson commences one
+of his interesting books with Emerson's saying,
+"that Everything in nature is engaged in
+writing its own history;" and, as this remark
+cannot be improved on, it may well stand at
+the head of a chapter dealing with the footprints
+that the creatures of yore left on the
+sands of the sea-shore, the mud of a long-vanished
+lake bottom, or the shrunken bed of some
+water-course. Not only have creatures that
+walked left a record of their progress, but the
+worms that burrowed in the sand, the shell-fish
+that trailed over the mud when the tide was
+low, the stranded crab as he scuttled back to
+the sea&mdash;each and all left some mark to tell
+of their former presence. Even the rain that fell<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+and the very wind that blew sometimes recorded
+the direction whence they came, and
+we may read in the rocks, also, accounts of
+freshets sweeping down with turbid waters, and
+of long periods of drouth, when the land was
+parched and lakes and rivers shrank beneath
+the burning sun.</p>
+
+<p>All these things have been told and retold;
+but, as there are many who have not read
+Mr. Hutchinson's books and to whom Buckland
+is quite unknown, it may be excusable
+to add something to what has already been
+said in the first chapter of these impressions
+of the past.</p>
+
+<p>The very earliest suggestion we have of the
+presence of animal life upon this globe is in
+the form of certain long dark streaks below
+the Cambrian of England, considered to be
+traces of the burrows of worms that were filled
+with fine mud, and while this interpretation
+may be wrong there is, on the other hand, no
+reason why it may not be correct. Plant and
+animal life must have had very lowly beginnings,
+and it is not at all probable that we
+shall find any trace of the simple and minute<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+forms with which they started,<a id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> though we
+should not be surprised at finding hints of the
+presence of living creatures below the strata
+in which their remains are actually known to
+occur.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Within the last few years what are believed to be indications
+of bacteria have been described from carboniferous rocks.
+Naturally such announcements must be accepted with great
+caution, for while there is no reason why this may not be true,
+it is much more probable that definite evidence of the effects of
+bacteria on plants should be found than that these simple, single-celled
+organisms should themselves have been detected.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Worm burrows, to be sure, are hardly footprints,
+but tracks are found in Cambrian rocks
+just above the strata in which the supposed
+burrows occur, and from that time onward
+there are tracks a-plenty, for they have been
+made, wherever the conditions were favorable,
+ever since animals began to walk. All that
+was needed was a medium in which impressions
+could be made and so filled that there
+was imperfect adhesion between mould and
+matrix. Thus we find them formed not only
+by the sea-shore, in sands alternately dry and
+covered, but by the river-side, in shallow water,
+or even on land where tracks might be left in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>soft or moist earth into which wind-driven
+dust or sand might lodge, or sand or mud be
+swept by the mimic flood caused by a thunder
+shower.</p>
+
+<p>So there are tracks in strata of every age;
+at first those of invertebrates: after the worm
+burrows the curious complicated trails of animals
+believed to be akin to the king crab;
+broad, ribbed, ribbon-like paths ascribed to
+trilobites; then faint scratches of insects, and
+the shallow, palmed prints of salamanders, and
+the occasional slender sprawl of a lizard; then
+footprints, big and little, of the horde of Dinosaurs
+and, finally, miles above the Cambrian,
+marks of mammals. Sometimes, like the
+tracks of salamanders and reptiles in the carboniferous
+rocks of Pennsylvania and Kansas,
+these are all we have to tell of the existence
+of air-breathing animals. Again, as with the
+iguanodon, the foot to fit the track may be
+found in the same layer of rock, but this is not
+often the case.</p>
+
+<p>Although footprints in the rocks must often
+have been seen, they seem to have attracted little
+or no notice from scientific men until about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+1830 to 1835, when they were almost simultaneously
+described both in Europe and America;
+even then, it was some time before they
+were generally conceded to be actually the
+tracks of animals, but, like worm burrows and
+trails, were looked upon as the impressions of
+sea-weeds.</p>
+
+<p>The now famous tracks in the "brown
+stone" of the Connecticut Valley seem to have
+first been seen by Pliny Moody in 1802, when
+he ploughed up a specimen on his farm, showing
+small imprints, which later on were popularly
+called the tracks of Noah's raven. The
+discovery passed without remark until in 1835
+the footprints came under the observation of
+Dr. James Deane, who, in turn, called Professor
+Hitchcock's attention to them. The latter at
+once began a systematic study of these impressions,
+publishing his first account in 1836
+and continuing his researches for many years,
+in the course of which he brought together the
+fine collection in Amherst College. At that
+time Dinosaurs were practically unknown, and
+it is not to be wondered at that these three-toed
+tracks, great and small, were almost universally<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+believed to be those of birds. So it is
+greatly to the credit of Dr. Deane, who also
+studied these footprints, that he was led to
+suspect that they might have been made by
+other animals. This suspicion was partly
+caused by the occasional association of four
+and five-toed prints with the three-toed impressions,
+and partly by the rare occurrence of
+imprints showing the texture of the sole of the
+foot, which was quite different from that of
+any known bird.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_067.jpg" width="400" height="186"  alt="" />
+Fig. 6.&mdash;Where a Dinosaur Sat Down.
+</div>
+
+<p>In the light of our present knowledge we
+are able to read many things in these tracks
+that were formerly more or less obscure, and
+to see in them a complete verification of Dr.
+Deane's suspicion that they were not made by
+birds. We see clearly that the long tracks<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+called <i>Anom&oelig;pus</i>, with their accompanying
+short fore feet, mark where some Dinosaur
+squatted down to rest or progressed slowly on
+all-fours, as does the kangaroo when feeding
+quietly;<a id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and we interpret the curious heart-shaped
+depression sometimes seen back of the
+feet, not as the mark of a stubby tail, but as
+made by the ends of the slender pubes, bones
+that help form the hip-joints. Then, too, the
+mark of the inner, or short first, toe, is often
+very evident, although it was a long time before
+the bones of this toe were actually found,
+and many of the Dinosaurs now known to
+have four toes were supposed to have but
+three.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>It is to be noted that a leaping kangaroo touches the
+ground neither with his heel nor his tail, but that between
+jumps he rests momentarily on his toes only; hence impressions
+made by any creature that jumped like a kangaroo would
+be very short.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>It seems strange, and it is strange, that
+while so many hundreds of tracks should have
+been found in the limited area exposed to view,
+so few bones have been found&mdash;our knowledge
+of the veritable animals that made the tracks
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>being a blank. A few examples have, it is
+true, been found, but these are only a tithe of
+those known to have existed; while of the great
+animals that strode along the shore, leaving
+tracks fifteen inches long and a yard apart
+pressed deeply into the hard sand, not a bone
+remains. The probability is that the strata
+containing their bones lie out to sea, whither
+their bodies were carried by tides and currents,
+and that we may never see more than the few
+fragments that were scattered along the seaside.</p>
+
+<p>That part of the Valley of the Connecticut
+wherein the footprints are found seems to have
+been a long, narrow estuary running southward
+from Turner's Falls, Mass., where the
+tracks are most abundant and most clear.
+The topography was such that this estuary
+was subject to sudden and great fluctuations of
+the water-level, large tracts of shore being now
+left dry to bake in the sun, and again covered
+by turbid water which deposited on the bottom
+a layer of mud. Over and over again this
+happened, forming layer upon layer of what is
+now stone, sometimes the lapse of time between
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+the deposits being so short that the
+tracks of the big Dinosaurs extend through
+several sheets of stone; while again there was a
+period of drouth when the shore became so dry
+and firm as to retain but a single shallow impression.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_070.jpg" width="400" height="263"  alt="" />
+Fig. 7.&mdash;Footprints of Dinosaurs on the Brownstone of the Connecticut Valley.
+<br />
+<i>From a slab in the museum of Amherst College.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>Something of the wealth of animal life that
+roamed about this estuary may be gathered
+from the number of different footprints recorded
+on the sands, and these are so many and
+so varied that Professor Hitchcock in two extensive
+reports enumerated over 150 species,
+representing various groups of animals. One
+little point must, however, be borne in mind,
+that mere size is no sure indication of differences
+in dealing with reptiles, for these long-lived
+creatures grow almost continuously
+throughout life, so that one animal even may
+have left his footprints over and over in assorted
+sizes from one end of the valley to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The slab shown in Fig. 7 is a remarkably
+fine example of these Connecticut River footprints;
+it shows in relief forty-eight tracks of
+the animal called Brontozoum sillimanium and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+six of a lesser species. It was quarried near
+Middletown, in 1778, and for sixty years did
+duty as a flagstone, fortunately with the face
+downwards. When taken up for repairs the
+tracks were discovered, and later on the slab,
+which measures three by five feet, was transferred
+to the museum of Amherst College.</p>
+
+<p>There is an interesting parallel between the
+history of footprints in England and America,
+for they were noticed at about the same time,
+1830, in both countries; in each case the tracks
+were in rocks of Triassic age, and, in both instances,
+the animals that made them have
+never been found. In England, however, the
+tracks first found were those ascribed to tortoises,
+though a little later Dinosaur footprints
+were discovered in the same locality. Oddly
+enough these numerous tracks all run one
+way, from west to east, as if the animals were
+migrating, or were pursuing some well-known
+and customary route to their feeding grounds.</p>
+
+<p>For some reason Triassic rocks are particularly
+rich in footprints; for from strata of this
+same age in the Rhine Valley come those curious
+examples so like the mark of a stubby<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+hand that Dr. Kaup christened the beast supposed
+to have made them <i>Cheirotherium</i>, beast
+with a hand, suggesting that they had been
+made by some gigantic opossum. As the
+tracks measure five by eight inches, it would
+have been rather a large specimen, but the
+mammals had not then arisen, and it is generally
+believed that the impressions were made
+by huge (for their kind) salamander-like creatures,
+known as labyrinthodonts, whose remains
+are found in the same strata.</p>
+
+<p>Footprints may aid greatly in determining
+the attitude assumed by extinct animals, and
+in this way they have been of great service in
+furnishing proof that many of the Dinosaurs
+walked erect. The impressions on the sands
+of the old Connecticut estuary may be said to
+show this very plainly, but in England and
+Belgium is evidence still more conclusive, in
+the shape of tracks ascribed to the Iguanodon.
+These were made on soft soil into which the
+feet sank much more deeply than in the Connecticut
+sands, and the casts made in the natural
+moulds show the impression of toes very
+clearly. If the animals had walked flat-footed,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+as we do, the prints of the toes would have
+been followed by a long heel mark, but such
+is not the case; there are the sharply defined
+marks of the toes and nothing more, showing
+plainly that the Iguanodons walked, like birds,
+on the toes alone. More than this, had these
+Dinosaurs dragged their tails there would have
+been a continuous furrow between the footprints;
+but nothing of this sort is to be found;
+on the contrary, a fine series of tracks, uncovered
+at Hastings, England, made by several
+individuals and running for seventy-five feet,
+shows footprints only. Hence it may be fairly
+concluded that these great creatures carried
+their tails clear of the ground, as shown in the
+picture of <i>Thespesius</i>, the weight of the tail
+counterbalancing that of the body. Where
+crocodilians or some of the short-limbed Dinosaurs
+have crept along there is, as we should
+expect, a continuous furrow between the imprints
+of the feet. This is what footprints tell
+us when their message is read aright; when
+improperly translated they only add to the
+enormous bulk of our ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago we were treated to accounts<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+of wonderful footprints in the rock of the
+prison-yard at Carson City, Nev., which, according
+to the papers, not only showed that
+men existed at a much earlier period than the
+scientific supposed, but that they were men
+of giant stature. This was clearly demonstrated
+by the footprints, for they were such as
+<i>might</i> have been made by huge moccasined
+feet, and this was all that was necessary for
+the conclusion that they <i>were</i> made by just
+such feet. For it is a curious fact that the
+majority of mankind seem to prefer any explanation
+other than the most simple and natural,
+particularly in the case of fossils, and are
+always looking for a primitive race of gigantic
+men.</p>
+
+<p>Bones of the Mastodon and Mammoth have
+again and again been eagerly accepted as those
+of giants; a salamander was brought forward
+as evidence of the deluge (<i>homo diluvii testis</i>);
+ammonites and their allies pose as fossil snakes,
+and the "petrified man" flourishes perennially.
+However, in this case the prints were recognized
+by naturalists as having most probably
+been made by some great ground sloth, such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+as the Mylodon or Morotherium, these animals,
+though belonging to a group whose headquarters
+were in Patagonia, having extended
+their range as far north as Oregon. That the
+tracks seemed to have been made by a biped,
+rather than a quadruped, was due to the fact
+that the prints of the hind feet fell upon and
+obliterated the marks of the fore. Still, a little
+observation showed that here and there prints
+of the fore feet were to be seen, and on one
+spot were indications of a struggle between
+two of the big beasts. The mud, or rather
+the stone that had been mud, bears the imprints
+of opposing feet, one set deeper at the
+toes, the other at the heels, as if one animal
+had pushed and the other resisted. In the
+rock, too, are broad depressions bearing the
+marks of coarse hair, where one creature had
+apparently sat on its haunches in order to use
+its fore limbs to the best advantage. Other
+footprints there are in this prison-yard; the
+great round "spoor" of the mammoth, the
+hoofs of a deer, and the paws of a wolf(?), indicating
+that hereabout was some pool where all
+these creatures came to drink. More than this,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+we learn that when these prints were made, or
+shortly after, a strong wind blew from the
+southeast, for on that face of the ridges bounding
+the margin of each big footprint, we find
+sand that lodged against the squeezed-up mud
+and stuck there to serve as a perpetual record
+of the direction of the wind.</p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>Almost every museum has some specimen of the Connecticut
+Valley footprints, but the largest and finest collections
+are in the museums of Amherst College, Mass.,
+and Yale University, although, owing to lack of room,
+only a few of the Yale specimens are on exhibition.
+The collection at Amherst comprises most of the types
+described by Professor E. Hitchcock in his "Ichnology of
+New England," a work in two fully illustrated quarto
+volumes. Other footprints are described and figured by
+Dr. J. Deane in "Ichnographs from the Sandstone of
+the Connecticut River."</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_078.jpg" width="400" height="123"  alt="" />
+Fig. 8.&mdash;The Track of a Three-toed Dinosaur.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<i>A time there was when the universe was darkness and
+water, wherein certain animals of frightful and compound
+mien were generated. There were serpents, and other creatures
+with the mixed shapes of one another....</i>"&mdash;<i>The Archaic
+Genesis.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>History shows us how in the past nation after
+nation has arisen, increased in size and strength,
+extended its bounds and dominion until it became
+the ruling power of the world, and then
+passed out of existence, often so completely
+that nothing has remained save a few mounds
+of dirt marking the graves of former cities.
+And so has it been with the kingdoms of
+nature. Just as Greece, Carthage, and Rome
+were successively the rulers of the sea in the
+days that we call old, so, long before the advent
+of man, the seas were ruled by successive races
+of creatures whose bones now lie scattered
+over the beds of the ancient seas, even as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+wrecks of galleys lie strewn over the bed of
+the Mediterranean. For a time the armor-clad
+fishes held undisputed sway; then their
+reign was ended by the coming of the sharks,
+who in their turn gave way to the fish-lizards,
+the Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs. These, however,
+were rather local in their rule; but the
+next group of reptiles to appear on the scene,
+the great marine reptiles called Mosasaurs,
+practically extended their empire around the
+world, from New Zealand to North America.</p>
+
+<p>We properly call these reptiles great, for so
+they were; but there are degrees of greatness,
+and there is a universal tendency to think of
+the animals that have become extinct as much
+greater than those of the present day, to magnify
+the reptile that we never saw as well as
+the fish that "got away," and it may be safely
+said that the greatest of animals will shrink
+before a two-foot rule. As a matter of fact,
+no animals are known to have existed that
+were larger than the whales; and, while there
+are now no reptiles that can compare in bulk
+with the Dinosaurs, there were few Mosasaurs
+that exceeded in size a first-class Crocodile.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+An occasional Mosasaur reaches a length of
+forty feet, but such are rare indeed, and one
+even twenty-five feet long is a large specimen,<a id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>
+while the great Mugger, or Man-eating Crocodile,
+grows, if permitted, to a length of twenty-five
+or even thirty feet, and need not be
+ashamed to match his bulk and jaws against
+those of most Mosasaurs.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>It is surprising to find Professor Cope placing the length
+of the Mosasaurs at 70, 80, or 100 feet, as there is not the
+slightest basis for even the lowest of these figures. Professor
+Williston, the best authority on the subject, states, in his volume
+on the "Cretaceous Reptiles of Kansas," that there is not in existence
+any specimen of a Mosasaur indicating a greater length
+than 45 feet.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The first of these sea-reptiles to be discovered
+has passed into history, and now
+reposes in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris,
+after changing hands two or three times,
+the original owner being dispossessed of his
+treasure by the subtleties of law, while the
+next holder was deprived of the specimen
+by main force. Thus the story is told by
+M. Faujas St. Fond, as rendered into English,
+in Mantell's "Petrifactions and their Teachings":
+"Some workmen, in blasting the rock
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>in one of the caverns of the interior of the
+mountain, perceived, to their astonishment, the
+jaws of a large animal attached to the roof of
+the chasm. The discovery was immediately
+made known to M. Hoffman, who repaired to
+the spot, and for weeks presided over the arduous
+task of separating the mass of stone containing
+these remains from the surrounding
+rock. His labors were rewarded by the successful
+extrication of the specimen, which he
+conveyed in triumph to his house. This extraordinary
+discovery, however, soon became
+the subject of general conversation, and excited
+so much interest that the canon of the cathedral
+which stands on the mountain resolved to claim
+the fossil, in right of being lord of the manor,
+and succeeded, after a long and harassing lawsuit,
+in obtaining the precious relic. It remained
+for years in his possession, and Hoffman
+died without regaining his treasure. At
+length the French Revolution broke out, and
+the armies of the Republic advanced to the
+gates of Maestricht. The town was bombarded;
+but, at the suggestion of the committee
+of savans who accompanied the French<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+troops to select their share of the plunder, the
+artillery was not suffered to play on that part
+of the city in which the celebrated fossil was
+known to be preserved. In the meantime, the
+canon of St. Peter's, shrewdly suspecting the
+reason why such peculiar favor was shown to
+his residence, removed the specimen and concealed
+it in a vault; but, when the city was
+taken, the French authorities compelled him
+to give up his ill-gotten prize, which was
+immediately transmitted to the Jardin des
+Plantes, at Paris, where it still forms one of
+the most interesting objects in that magnificent
+collection." And there it remains to
+this day.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_084.jpg" width="400" height="559"  alt="" />
+Fig. 9.&mdash;A Great Sea Lizard, <i>Tylosaurus Dyspelor</i>.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>The seas that rolled over western Kansas
+were the headquarters of the Mosasaurs, and
+hundreds&mdash;aye, thousands&mdash;of specimens
+have been taken from the chalk bluffs of that
+region, some of them in such a fine state of
+preservation that we are not only well acquainted
+with their internal structure, but with
+their outward appearance as well. They were
+essentially swimming lizards&mdash;great, overgrown,
+and distant relatives of the Monitors
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+of Africa and Asia, especially adapted to a
+roving, predatory life by their powerful tails
+and paddle-shaped feet. Their cup-and-ball
+vertebr&aelig; indicate great flexibility of the body,
+their sharp teeth denote ability to capture slippery
+prey, and the structure of the lower jaw
+shows that they probably ate in a hurry and
+swallowed their food entire, or bolted it in
+great chunks. The jaws of all reptiles are
+made up of a number of pieces, but these are
+usually so spliced together that each half of the
+jaw is one inflexible, or nearly inflexible, mass
+of bone. In snakes, which swallow their prey
+entire, the difficulty of swallowing animals
+greater in diameter than themselves is surmounted
+by having the two halves of the lower
+jaw loosely joined at the free ends, so that
+these may spread wide apart and thus increase
+the gape of the mouth. This is also helped by
+the manner in which the jaw is joined to the
+head. The pelican solves the problem by the
+length of his mandibles, this allowing so much
+spring that when open they bow apart to
+form a nice little landing net. In the Mosasaurs,
+as in the cormorants, among birds, there
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+is a sort of joint in each half of the lower jaw
+which permits it to bow outward when opened,
+and this, aided by the articulation of the jaw
+with the cranium, adds greatly to the swallowing
+capacity. Thus in nature the same end is
+attained by very different methods. To borrow
+a suggestion from Professor Cope, if the
+reader will extend his arms at full length, the
+palms touching, and then bend his elbows outward
+he will get a very good idea of the action
+of a Mosasaur's jaw. The western sea
+was a lively place in the day of the great
+Mosasaurs, for with them swam the king of
+turtles, Archelon, as Mr. Wieland has fitly
+named him, a creature a dozen feet or more in
+length, with a head a full yard long, while in
+the shallows prowled great fishes with massive
+jaws and teeth like spikes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_087.jpg" width="400" height="83"  alt="" />
+Fig. 10.&mdash;Jaw of a Mosasaur, Showing the Joint that
+Increased the Swallowing Capacity of that Reptile.
+</div>
+
+<p>There, too, was the great, toothed diver,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+Hesperornis (see page 83), while over the
+waters flew pterodactyls, with a spread of
+wing of twenty feet, largest of all flying
+creatures; and, not improbably&mdash;nay, very
+probably&mdash;fish-eaters, too; and when each and
+all of these were seeking their dinners, there
+were troublous times for the small fry in that
+old Kansan sea.</p>
+
+<p>And then there came a change; to the
+south, to the west, to the north, the land was
+imperceptibly but surely rising, perhaps only
+an inch or two in a century, but still rising,
+until "The Ocean in which flourished this
+abundant and vigorous life was at last completely
+inclosed on the west by elevations of
+sea-bottom, so that it only communicated with
+the Atlantic and Pacific at the Gulf of Mexico
+and the Arctic Sea."</p>
+
+<p>The continued elevation of both eastern and
+western shores contracted its area, and when
+ridges of the sea-bottom reached the surface,
+forming long, low bars, parts of the water-area
+were included, and connection with salt-water
+prevented. Thus were the living beings imprisoned
+and subjected to many new risks to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+life. The stronger could more readily capture
+the weaker, while the fishes would gradually
+perish through the constant freshening of the
+water. With the death of any considerable
+class, the balance of food-supply would be lost,
+and many large species would disappear from
+the scene. The most omnivorous and enduring
+would longest resist the approach of starvation,
+but would finally yield to inexorable fate&mdash;the
+last one caught by the shifting bottom among
+shallow pools, from which his exhausted energies
+could not extricate him.<a id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Cope: "The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of
+the West," p. 50, being the "Report of the United States Geological
+Survey of the Territories," Vol. II.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Like the "Fossil man" the sea-serpent
+flourishes perennially in the newspapers and,
+despite the fact that he is now mainly regarded
+as a joke, there have been many attempts to
+habilitate this mythical monster and place him
+on a foundation of firm fact. The most earnest
+of these was that of M. Oudemans, who
+expressed his belief in the existence of some
+rare and huge seal-like creature whose occasional
+appearance in southern waters gave rise
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>to the best authenticated reports of the sea-serpent.
+Among other possibilities it has been
+suggested that some animal believed to be extinct
+had really lived over to the present day.
+Now there are a few waifs, spared from the
+wrecks of ancient faunas, stranded on the
+shores of the present, such as the Australian
+Ceratodus and the Gar Pikes of North America,
+and these and all other creatures that could
+be mustered in were used as proofs to sustain
+this theory. If, it was said, these animals
+have been spared, why not others? If a fish
+of such ancient lineage as the Gar Pike is so
+common as to be a nuisance, why may there
+not be a few Plesiosaurs or a Mosasaur somewhere
+in the depths of the ocean? The argument
+was a good one, the more that we may
+"suppose" almost anything, but it must be
+said that no trace of any of these creatures has
+so far been found outside of the strata in which
+they have long been known to occur, and all
+the probabilities are opposed to this theory.
+Still, if some of these creatures <i>had</i> been spared,
+they might well have passed for sea-serpents,
+even though Zeuglodon, the one most like a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+serpent in form, was the one most remotely related
+to snakes.</p>
+
+<p>Zeuglodon, the yoke-tooth, so named from
+the shape of its great cutting teeth, was indeed
+a strange animal, and if we wonder at
+the Greenland Whale, whose head is one-third
+its total length, we may equally wonder at
+Zeuglodon, with four feet of head, ten feet of
+body, and forty feet of tail. No one, seeing
+the bones of the trunk and tail for the first
+time, would suspect that they belonged to the
+same animal, for while the vertebr&aelig; of the
+body are of moderate size, those of the tail
+are, for the bulk of creature, the longest
+known, measuring from fifteen to eighteen
+inches in length, and weighing in a fossil condition
+fifty to sixty pounds. In life, the animal
+was from fifty to seventy feet in length,
+and not more than six or eight feet through
+the deepest part of the body, while the tail
+was much less; the head was small and
+pointed, the jaws well armed with grasping
+and cutting teeth, and just back of the head
+was a pair of short paddles, not unlike those
+of a fur seal. It is curious to speculate on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+the habits of a creature in which the tail so
+obviously wagged the dog and whose articulations
+all point to great freedom of movement
+up and down. This may mean that it was an
+active diver, descending to great depths to
+prey upon squid, as the Sperm-Whale does
+to-day, while it seems quite certain that it
+must have reared at least a third of its great
+length out of water to take a comprehensive
+view of its surroundings. And if size is any
+indication of power, the great tail, which obviously
+ended in flukes like those of a whale,
+must have been capable of propelling the beast
+at a speed of twenty or thirty miles an hour.
+Something of the kind must have been needed
+in order that the small head might provide food
+enough for the great tail, and it has been suggested
+that inability to do this was the reason
+why Zeuglodon became extinct. On the other
+hand, it has been ingeniously argued that the
+huge tail served to store up fat when food was
+plenty, which was drawn upon when food became
+scarce. The fur seals do something similar
+to this, for the males come on shore in
+May rolling in blubber, and depart in September<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+lean and hungry after a three months'
+fast.</p>
+
+<p>Zeuglodons must have been very numerous
+in the old Gulf of Mexico, for bones are found
+abundantly through portions of our Southern
+States; it was also an inhabitant of the old
+seas of southern Europe, but, as we shall see,
+it gave place to the great fossil shark, and this
+in turn passed out of existence. Still, common
+though its bones may be, stories of their use
+for making stone walls&mdash;and these stories are
+still in circulation&mdash;resolve themselves on
+close scrutiny into the occasional use of a big
+vertebra to support the corner of a corn-crib.</p>
+
+<p>The scientific name of Zeuglodon is <i>Basilosaurus
+cetoides</i>, the whale-like king lizard&mdash;the
+first of these names, <i>Basilosaurus</i>, having been
+given to it by the original describer, Dr. Harlan,
+who supposed the animal to have been a
+reptile. Now it is a primary rule of nomenclature
+that the first name given to an animal
+must stick and may not be changed, even by
+the act of a zo&ouml;logical congress, so Zeuglodon
+must, so far as its name is concerned, masquerade
+as a reptile for the rest of its paleontological<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+life. This, however, really matters
+very little, because scientific names are simply
+verbal handles by which we may grasp animals
+to describe them, and Dr. Le Conte, to show
+how little there may be in a name, called a
+beetle Gyascutus. Owen's name of Zeuglodon,
+although not tenable as a scientific name, is
+too good to be wasted, and being readily remembered
+and easily pronounced may be used
+as a popular name.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_095.jpg" width="400" height="235"  alt="" />
+Fig. 11.&mdash;Koch&#39;s Hydrarchus, Composed of Portions of the Skeleton of Several Zeuglodons.
+</div>
+
+<p>One might think that a creature sixty or
+seventy feet long was amply long enough, but
+Dr. Albert Koch thought otherwise, and did
+with Zeuglodon as, later on, he did with the
+Mastodon, combining the vertebr&aelig; of several
+individuals until he had a monster 114 feet
+long! This he exhibited in Europe under the
+name of Hydrarchus, or water king, finally
+disposing of the composite creature to the
+Museum of Dresden, where it was promptly
+reduced to its proper dimensions. The natural
+make-up of Zeuglodon is sufficiently composite
+without any aid from man, for the head
+and paddles are not unlike those of a seal, the
+ribs are like those of a manatee, and the shoulder
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+blades are precisely like those of a whale,
+while the vertebr&aelig; are different from those
+of any other animal, even its own cousin and
+lesser contemporary Dorudon. There were
+also tiny hind legs tucked away beneath skin,
+but these, as well as many other parts of the
+animal's structure were unknown, until Mr.
+Charles Schuchert collected a series of specimens
+for the National Museum, from which it
+was possible to restore the entire skeleton.
+Owing to a rather curious circumstance the
+first attempt at a restoration was at fault;
+among the bones originally obtained by Mr.
+Schuchert there were none from the last half
+of the tail, an old gully having cut off the
+hinder portion of the backbone and destroyed
+the vertebr&aelig;. Not far away, however, was a
+big lump of stone containing several vertebr&aelig;
+of just the right size, and these were used as
+models to complete the papier-mach&eacute; skeleton
+shown at Atlanta, in 1894. But a year after
+Mr. Schuchert collected a series of vertebr&aelig;,
+beginning with the tip of the tail, and these
+showed conclusively that the first lot of tail
+vertebr&aelig; belonged to a creature still undescribed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+and one probably more like a whale
+than Zeuglodon himself, whose exact relationships
+are a little uncertain, as may be imagined
+from what was said of its structure. Mixed
+with the bones of Zeuglodon was the shell of
+a turtle, nearly three feet long, and part of the
+backbone of a great water-snake that must
+have been twenty-five feet long, both previously
+quite unknown. One more curious
+thing about Zeuglodon bones remains to be
+told, and then we are done with him; ordinarily
+a fossil bone will break indifferently in any
+direction, but the bones of Zeuglodon are built,
+like an onion, of concentric layers, and these
+have a great tendency to peel off during the
+preparation of a specimen.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>And now, as the wheels of time and change
+rolled slowly on, sharks again came uppermost,
+and the warmer Eocene and Miocene oceans
+appear to have fairly teemed with these sea
+wolves. There were small sharks with slender
+teeth for catching little fishes, there were
+larger sharks with saw-like teeth for cutting
+slices out of larger fishes, and there were sharks<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+that might almost have swallowed the biggest
+fish of to-day whole, sharks of a size the waters
+had never before contained, and fortunately do
+not contain now. We know these monsters
+mostly by their teeth, for their skeletons were
+cartilaginous, and this absence of their remains
+is probably the reason why these creatures are
+passed by while the adjectives huge, immense,
+enormous are lavished on the Mosasaurs and
+Plesiosaurs&mdash;animals that the great-toothed
+shark, <i>Carcharodon megalodon</i>, might well
+have eaten at a meal. For the gaping jaws
+of one of these sharks, with its hundreds of
+gleaming teeth must, at a moderate estimate,
+have measured not less than six feet across.</p>
+
+<p>The great White Shark, the man-eater, so
+often found in story books, so rarely met with
+in real life, attains a length of thirty feet, and
+a man just makes him a good, satisfactory
+lunch. Now a tooth of this shark is an inch
+and a quarter long, while a tooth of the huge
+<i>Megalodon</i> is commonly three, often four, and
+not infrequently five inches long. Applying
+the rule of three to such a tooth as this would
+give a shark 120 feet long, bigger than most<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+whales, to whom a man would be but a
+mouthful, just enough to whet his sharkship's
+appetite. Even granting that the rule of three
+unduly magnifies the dimensions of the brute,
+and making an ample reduction, there would
+still remain a fish between seventy-five and
+one hundred feet long, quite large enough to
+satisfy the most ambitious of <i>tuna</i> fishers, and
+to have made bathing in the Miocene ocean
+unpopular. Contemporary with the great-toothed
+shark was another and closely related
+species that originated with him in Eocene
+times, and these two may possibly have had
+something to do with the extinction of Zeuglodon.
+This species is distinguished by having
+on either side of the base of the great triangular
+cutting teeth a little projection or
+cusp, like the "ear" on a jar, so that this species
+has been named <i>auriculatus</i>, or eared.
+The edges of the teeth are also more saw-like
+than in those of its greater relative, and as the
+species must have attained a length of fifty or
+sixty feet it may, with its better armature,
+have been quite as formidable. And, as perhaps
+the readers of these pages may know, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+supply of teeth never ran short. Back of each
+tooth, one behind another arranged in serried
+ranks, lay a reserve of six or seven smaller, but
+growing teeth, and whenever a tooth of the
+front row was lost, the tooth immediately
+behind it took its place, and like a well-trained
+soldier kept the front line unbroken. Thus
+the teeth of sharks are continually developing
+at the back, and all the teeth are steadily
+pushing forward, a very simple mechanical
+arrangement causing the teeth to lie flat until
+they reach the front of the jaw and come
+into use.</p>
+
+<p>Once fairly started in life, these huge sharks
+spread themselves throughout the warm seas
+of the world, for there was none might stand
+before them and say nay. They swarmed
+along our southern coast, from Maryland to
+Texas; they swarmed everywhere that the water
+was sufficiently warm, for their teeth occur in
+Tertiary strata in many parts of the world, and
+the deep-sea dredges of the Challenger and
+Albatross have brought up their teeth by scores.
+And then&mdash;they perished, perished as utterly
+as did the hosts of Sennacherib. Why? We do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+not know. Did they devour everything large
+enough to be eaten throughout their habitat,
+and then fall to eating one another? Again,
+we do not know. But perish they did, while
+the smaller white shark, which came into being
+at the same time, still lives, as if to emphasize
+the fact that it is best not to overdo things,
+and that in the long run the victory is not
+<i>always</i> to the largest.</p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>The finest Mosasaur skeleton ever discovered, an
+almost complete skeleton of Tylosaurus dyspelor, 29 feet
+in length, may be seen at the head of the staircase leading
+to the Hall of Paleontology, in the American Museum
+of Natural History, New York. Another good specimen
+may be seen in the Yale University Museum, which probably
+has the largest collection of Mosasaurs in existence.
+Another fine collection is in the Museum of the State
+University of Kansas, at Lawrence.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The best Zeuglodon, the first to show the vestigial hind
+legs and to make clear other portions of the structure, is
+in the United States National Museum.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The great sharks are known in this country by their
+teeth only, and, as these are common in the phosphate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+beds, specimens may be seen in almost any collection. In
+the United States National Museum, the jaws of a twelve-foot
+blue shark are shown for comparison. The largest
+tooth in that collection is 5-3/4 inches high and 5 inches
+across the base. It takes five teeth of the blue shark to
+fill the same number of inches.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The Mosasaurs are described in detail by Professor S.
+W. Williston, in Vol. IV. of the "University Geological
+Survey of Kansas." There is a technical&mdash;and, consequently,
+uninteresting&mdash;account of Zeuglodon in Vol.
+XXIII. of the "Proceedings of the United States National
+Museum," page 327.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter200">
+<img src="images/i_102.jpg" width="200" height="340"  alt="" />
+Fig. 12.&mdash;A Tooth of Zeuglodon, one of the &quot;Yoke
+Teeth,&quot; from which it derives the name.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">BIRDS OF OLD</p>
+
+<div class="inset22">
+<p>
+"<i>With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,<br />
+And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.</i>"<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When we come to discuss the topic of the earliest
+bird&mdash;not the one in the proverb&mdash;our
+choice of subjects is indeed limited, being restricted
+to the famous and oft-described Arch&aelig;opteryx
+from the quarries of Solenhofen, which
+at present forms the starting-point in the history
+of the feathered race. Bird-like, or at
+least feathered, creatures, must have existed
+before this, as it is improbable that feathers
+and flight were acquired at one bound, and
+this lends probability to the view that at least
+some of the tracks in the Connecticut Valley
+are really the footprints of birds. Not birds as
+we now know them, but still creatures wearing
+feathers, these being the distinctive badge and
+livery of the order. For we may well speak
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+of the feathered race, the exclusive prerogative
+of the bird being not flight but feathers; no
+bird is without them, no other creature wears
+them, so that birds may be exactly defined in
+two words, feathered animals. Reptiles, and
+even mammals, may go quite naked or cover
+themselves with a defensive armor of bony
+plates or horny scales; but under the blaze of
+the tropical sun or in the chill waters of arctic
+seas birds wear feathers only, although in the
+penguins the feathers have become so changed
+that their identity is almost lost.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_104.jpg" width="400" height="495"  alt="" />
+Fig. 13.&mdash;Arch&aelig;opteryx, the Earliest Known Bird.
+<br />
+<i>From the specimen in the Berlin Museum.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>So far as flight goes, there is one entire order
+of mammals, whose members, the bats, are
+quite as much at home in the air as the birds
+themselves, and in bygone days the empire of
+the air belonged to the pterodactyls; even frogs
+and fishes have tried to fly, and some of the
+latter have nearly succeeded in the attempt.
+As for wings, it may be said that they are
+made on very different patterns in such animals
+as the pterodactyl, bat, and bird, and that
+while the end to be achieved is the same, it is
+reached by very different methods. The wing
+membrane of a bat is spread between his out-<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>stretched
+fingers, the thumb alone being left
+free, while in the pterodactyl the thumb is
+wanting and the membrane supported only by
+what in us is the little finger, a term that is a
+decided misnomer in the case of the pterodactyl.
+In birds the fingers have lost their individuality,
+and are modified for the attachment
+or support of the wing feathers, but in
+Arch&aelig;opteryx the hand had not reached this
+stage, for the fingers were partly free and
+tipped with claws.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_107.jpg" width="400" height="559"  alt="" />
+Fig. 14.&mdash;Nature&#39;s Four Methods of Making a Wing.
+Bat, Pterodactyl, Arch&aelig;opteryx, and Modern Bird.
+</div>
+
+<p>We get some side lights on the structure of
+primitive birds by studying the young and the
+earlier stages of living species, for in a very
+general way it may be said that the development
+of the individual is a sort of rough sketch
+or hasty outline of the development of the class
+of which it is a member; thus the transitory
+stages through which the chick passes before
+hatching give us some idea of the structure of
+the adult birds or bird-like creatures of long
+ago. Now, in embryonic birds the wing ends
+in a sort of paw and the fingers are separate,
+quite different from what they become a little
+later on, and not unlike their condition in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+Arch&aelig;opteryx, and even more like what is
+found in the wing of an ostrich.</p>
+
+<p>Then, too, there are a few birds still left,
+such as the ostrich, that have not kept pace
+with the others, and are a trifle more like
+reptiles than the vast majority of their relatives,
+and these help a little in explaining the
+structure of early birds. Among these is a
+queer bird with a queer name, Hoactzin, found
+in South America, which when young uses its
+little wings much like legs, just as we may
+suppose was done by birds of old, to climb
+about the branches. Mr. Quelch, who has
+studied these curious birds in their native wilds
+of British Guiana, tells us that soon after hatching,
+the nestlings begin to crawl about by means
+of their legs and wings, the well-developed
+claws on the thumb and finger being constantly
+in use for hooking to surrounding objects. If
+they are drawn from the nest by means of their
+legs, they hold on firmly to the twigs, both with
+their bill and wings; and if the nest be upset
+they hold on to all objects with which they
+come in contact by bill, feet, and wings, making
+considerable use of the bill, with the help<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+of the clawed wings, to raise themselves to a
+higher level.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_110.jpg" width="400" height="424"  alt="" />
+Fig. 15.&mdash;Young Hoactzins.
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus, by putting these various facts together
+we obtain some pretty good ideas regarding the
+appearance and habits of the first birds. The
+immediate ancestors of birds, their exact point<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+of departure from other vertebrates, is yet to be
+discovered; at one time it was considered that
+they were the direct descendants of Dinosaurs,
+or that at least both were derived from the
+same parent forms, and while that view was
+almost abandoned, it is again being brought forward
+with much to support it. It has also been
+thought that birds and those flying reptiles, the
+pterodactyls, have had a common ancestry, and
+the possibility of this is still entertained. Be
+that as it may, it is safe to consider that back
+in the past, earlier than the Jurassic, were creatures
+neither bird nor reptile, but possessing
+rudimentary feathers and having the promise
+of a wing in the structure of their fore legs,
+and some time one of these animals may come
+to light; until then Arch&aelig;opteryx remains the
+earliest known bird.</p>
+
+<p>In the Jurassic, then, when the Dinosaurs
+were the lords of the earth and small mammals
+just beginning to appear, we come upon traces
+of full-fledged birds. The first intimation of
+their presence was the imprint of a single feather
+found in that ancient treasure-house, the Solenhofen
+quarries; but as Hercules was revealed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+by his foot, so the bird was made evident by
+the feather whose discovery was announced
+August 15, 1861. And a little later, in September
+of the same year, the bird itself turned
+up, and in 1877 a second specimen was found,
+the two representing two species, if not two
+distinct genera. These were very different
+from any birds now living&mdash;so different, indeed,
+and bearing such evident traces of their reptilian
+ancestry, that it is necessary to place them
+apart from other animals in a separate division
+of the class birds.</p>
+
+<p>Arch&aelig;opteryx was considerably smaller than
+a crow, with a stout little head armed with
+sharp teeth (as scarce as hens' teeth was no
+joke in that distant period), while as he fluttered
+through the air he trailed after him a tail
+longer than his body, beset with feathers on
+either side. Everyone knows that nowadays
+the feathers of a bird's tail are arranged like
+the sticks of a fan, and that the tail opens and
+shuts like a fan. But in Arch&aelig;opteryx the
+feathers were arranged in pairs, a feather on
+each side of every joint of the tail, so that on a
+small scale the tail was something like that of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+a kite; and because of this long, lizard-like tail
+this bird and his immediate kith and kin are
+placed in a group dubbed Saurur&aelig;, or lizard
+tailed.</p>
+
+<p>Because impressions of feathers are not found
+all around these specimens some have thought
+that they were confined to certain portions of
+the body&mdash;the wings, tail, and thighs&mdash;the
+other parts being naked. There seems, however,
+no good reason to suppose that such was
+the case, for it is extremely improbable that
+such perfect and important feathers as those of
+the wings and tail should alone have been developed,
+while there are many reasons why the
+feathers of the body might have been lost before
+the bird was covered by mud, or why their
+impressions do not show.</p>
+
+<p>It was a considerable time after the finding
+of the first specimen that the presence of teeth
+in the jaws was discovered, partly because the
+British Museum specimen was imperfect,<a id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> and
+partly because no one suspected that birds had
+ever possessed teeth, and so no one ever looked
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>for them. When, in 1877, a more complete
+example was found, the existence of teeth was
+unmistakably shown; but in the meantime,
+in February, 1873, Professor Marsh had announced
+the presence of teeth in Hesperornis,
+and so to him belongs the credit of being the
+discoverer of birds with teeth.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>The skull was lacking, and a part of the upper jaw lying
+to one side was thought to belong to a fish.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The next birds that we know are from our
+own country, and although separated by an interval
+of thousands of years from the Jurassic
+Arch&aelig;opteryx, time enough for the members
+of one group to have quite lost their wings, they
+still retain teeth, and in this respect the most
+bird-like of them is quite unlike any modern bird.
+These come from the chalk beds of western
+Kansas, and the first specimens were obtained
+by Professor Marsh in his expeditions of 1870
+and 1871, but not until a few years later, after
+the material had been cleaned and was being
+studied, was it ascertained that these birds were
+armed with teeth. The smaller of these birds,
+which was apparently not unlike a small gull
+in general appearance, was, saving its teeth, so
+thoroughly a bird that it may be passed by without
+further notice, but the larger was remarkable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+in many ways. Hesperornis, the western
+bird, was a great diver, in some ways the greatest
+of the divers, for it stood higher than the
+king penguin, though more slender and graceful
+in general build, looking somewhat like an
+overgrown, absolutely wingless loon.</p>
+
+<p>The penguins, as everyone knows, swim with
+their front limbs&mdash;we can't call them wings&mdash;which,
+though containing all the bones of a
+wing, have become transformed into powerful
+paddles; Hesperornis, on the other hand, swam
+altogether with its legs&mdash;swam so well with
+them, indeed, that through disuse the wings
+dwindled away and vanished, save one bone.
+This, however, is not stating the theory quite
+correctly; of course the matter cannot be actually
+proved. Hesperornis was a large bird, upwards
+of five feet in length, and if its ancestors
+were equally bulky their wings were quite
+too large to be used in swimming under water,
+as are those of such short-winged forms as the
+Auks which fly under the water quite as much
+as they fly over it. Hence the wings were
+closely folded upon the body so as to offer the
+least possible resistance, and being disused, they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+and their muscles dwindled, while the bones
+and muscles of the legs increased by constant
+use. By the time the wings were small enough
+to be used in so dense a medium as water the
+muscles had become too feeble to move them,
+and so degeneration proceeded until but one
+bone remained, a mere vestige of the wing that
+had been. The penguins retain their great
+breast muscles, and so did the Great Auk, because
+their wings are used in swimming, since
+it requires even more strength to move a small
+wing in water than it does to move a large
+wing in the thinner air. As for our domesticated
+fowls&mdash;the turkeys, chickens, and ducks&mdash;there
+has not been sufficient lapse of time
+for their muscles to dwindle, and besides artificial
+selection, the breeding of fowls for food
+has kept up the mere size of the muscles, although
+these lack the strength to be found in
+those of wild birds.</p>
+
+<p>As a swimming bird, one that swims with its
+legs and not with its wings, Hesperornis has
+probably never been equalled, for the size and
+appearance of the bones indicate great power,
+while the bones of the foot were so joined to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+those of the leg as to turn edgewise as the foot
+was brought forward and thus to offer the least
+possible resistance to the water. It is a remarkable
+fact that the leg bones of Hesperornis
+are hollow, remarkable because as a rule the
+bones of aquatic animals are more or less solid,
+their weight being supported by the water; but
+those of the great diver were almost as light as
+if it had dwelt upon the dry land. That it did
+not dwell there is conclusively shown by its
+build, and above all by its feet, for the foot of
+a running bird is modified in quite another
+way.</p>
+
+<p>The bird was probably covered with smooth,
+soft feathers, something like those of an Apteryx;
+this we know because Professor Williston
+found a specimen showing the impression of
+the skin of the lower part of the leg as well as
+of the feathers that covered the "thigh" and
+head. While such a covering seems rather inadequate
+for a bird of such exclusively aquatic
+habits as Hesperornis must have been, there
+seems no getting away from the facts in the
+case in the shape of Professor Williston's specimen,
+and we have in the Snake Bird, one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>the most aquatic of recent birds, an instance of
+similarly poor covering. As all know who have
+seen this bird at home, its feathers shed the water
+very imperfectly, and after long-continued
+submersion become saturated, a fact which partly
+accounts for the habit the bird has of hanging
+itself out to dry.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_118.jpg" width="400" height="250"  alt="" />
+Fig. 16.&mdash;Hesperornis, the Great Toothed Diver.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>The restoration which Mr. Gleeson has drawn
+differs radically from any yet made, and is the
+result of a careful study of the specimen belonging
+to the United States National Museum.
+No one can appreciate the peculiarities of Hesperornis
+and its remarkable departures from
+other swimming birds who has not seen the
+skeleton mounted in a swimming attitude.
+The great length of the legs, their position at
+the middle of the body, the narrowness of the
+body back of the hip joint, and the disproportionate
+length of the outer toe are all brought
+out in a manner which a picture of the bird
+squatting upon its haunches fails utterly to
+show. As for the tail, it is evident from the
+size and breadth of the bones that something
+of the kind was present; it is also evident that
+it was not like that of an ordinary bird, and so<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+it has been drawn with just a suggestion of
+Arch&aelig;opteryx about it.</p>
+
+<p>The most extraordinary thing about Hesperornis,
+however, is the position of the legs relative
+to the body, and this is something that
+was not even suspected until the skeleton was
+mounted in a swimming attitude. As anyone
+knows who has watched a duck swim, the usual
+place for the feet and legs is beneath and in a
+line with the body. But in our great extinct
+diver the articulations of the leg bones are such
+that this is impossible, and the feet and lower
+joint of the legs (called the tarsus) must have
+stood out nearly at right angles to the body,
+like a pair of oars. This is so peculiar and
+anomalous an attitude for a bird's legs that,
+although apparently indicated by the shape of
+the bones, it was at first thought to be due
+to the crushing and consequent distortion to
+which the bones had been subjected, and an
+endeavor was made to place the legs in the
+ordinary position, even though this was done
+at the expense of some little dislocation of the
+joints. But when the mounting of the skeleton
+had advanced further it became more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+evident that Hesperornis was not an ordinary
+bird, and that he could not have swum in the
+usual manner, since this would have brought his
+great knee-caps up into his body, which would
+have been uncomfortable. And so, at the cost
+of some little time and trouble,<a id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> the mountings
+were so changed that the legs stood out at
+the sides of the body, as shown in the picture.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>The mounting of fossil bones is quite a different matter
+from the wiring of an ordinary skeleton, since the bones are not
+only so hard that they cannot be bored and wired like those of a
+recent animal, but they are so brittle and heavy that often they
+will not sustain their own weight. Hence such bones must be
+supported from the outside, and to do this so that the mountings
+will be strong enough to support their weight, allow the bones to
+be removed for study, and yet be inconspicuous, is a difficult task.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>A final word remains to be said about
+toothed birds, which is, that the visitor who
+looks upon one for the first time will probably
+be disappointed. The teeth are so loosely implanted
+in the jaw that most of them fall out
+shortly after death, while the few that remain
+are so small as not to attract observation.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the Eocene Period was reached,
+even before that, birds had become pretty
+much what we now see them, and very little
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>change has taken place in them since that
+time; they seem to have become so exactly
+adapted to the conditions of existence that no
+further modification has taken place. This
+may be expressed in another way, by saying
+that while the Mammals of the Eocene have
+no near relatives among those now living,
+entire large groups having passed completely
+out of existence, the few birds that we know
+might, so far as their appearance and affinities
+go, have been killed yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>Were we to judge of the former abundance
+of birds by the number we find in a fossil
+state, we should conclude that in the early
+days of the world they were remarkably scarce,
+for bird bones are among the rarest of fossils.
+But from the high degree of development evidenced
+by the few examples that have come
+to light, and the fact that these represent
+various and quite distinct species,<a id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> we are led
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>to conclude that birds were abundant enough,
+but that we simply do not find them.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>But three birds, besides a stray feather or two, are so far
+known from the Eocene of North America. One of these is a
+fowl not very unlike some of the small curassows of South
+America; another is a little bird, supposed to be related to the
+sparrows, while the third is a large bird of uncertain relationships.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Several eggs, too&mdash;or, rather, casts of eggs&mdash;have
+lately been found in the Cretaceous
+and Miocene strata of the West; and, as eggs
+and birds are usually associated, we are liable
+at any time to come upon the bones of the
+birds that laid them.</p>
+
+<p>To the writer's mind no thoroughly satisfactory
+explanation has been given for the scarcity
+of bird remains; but the reason commonly
+advanced is that, owing to their lightness,
+dead birds float for a much longer time than
+other animals, and hence are more exposed to
+the ravages of the weather and the attacks of
+carrion-feeding animals. It has also been said
+that the power of flight enabled birds to
+escape calamities that caused the death of contemporary
+animals; but all birds do not fly;
+and birds do fall victims to storms, cold, and
+starvation, and even perish of pestilence, like
+the Cormorants of Bering Island, whose ranks
+have twice been decimated by disease.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that where carnivorous animals
+abound, dead birds do disappear quickly; and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+my friend Dr. Stejneger tells me that, while
+hundreds of dead sea-fowl are cast on the
+shores of the Commander Islands, it is a rare
+thing to find one after daylight, as the bodies
+are devoured by the Arctic foxes that prowl
+about the shores at night. But, again, as in
+the Miocene of Southern France and in the
+Pliocene of Oregon, remains of birds are fairly
+numerous, showing that, under proper conditions,
+their bones are preserved for future
+reference, so that we may hope some day to
+come upon specimens that will enable us to
+round out the history of bird life in the past.</p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>The first discovered specimen of Arch&aelig;opteryx, Arch&aelig;opteryx
+macrura, is in the British Museum, the second
+more complete example is in the Royal Museum of Natural
+History, Berlin. The largest collection of toothed
+birds, including the types of Hesperornis, Ichthyornis
+and others, is in the Yale University Museum, at New
+Haven. The United States National Museum at Washington
+has a fine mounted skeleton of Hesperornis, and
+the State University of Kansas, at Lawrence, has the example
+showing the impressions of feathers.</i></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>For scientific descriptions of these birds the reader is
+referred to Owen's paper "On the Arch&aelig;opteryx of von
+Meyer, with a Description of the Fossil Remains, etc.," in
+the "Transactions of the Philosophical Society of London
+for 1863," page 33, and "Odontornithes, a Monograph
+of the Extinct Toothed Birds of North America," by O.
+C. Marsh. Much popular and scientific information
+concerning the early birds is to be found in Newton's
+"Dictionary of Birds," and "The Story of Bird Life,"
+by W. P. Pycraft; the "Structure and Life of Birds,"
+by F. W. Headley; "The Story of the Birds," by J.
+Newton Baskett.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter300">
+<img src="images/i_126.jpg" width="300" height="352"  alt="" />
+Fig. 17.&mdash;Arch&aelig;opteryx as Restored by Mr. Pycraft.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">THE DINOSAURS</p>
+
+<div class="inset22">
+<p>
+"<i>Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small.</i>"<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A few million years ago, geologists and physicists
+do not agree upon the exact number,
+although both agree upon the millions, when
+the Rocky Mountains were not yet born and
+the now bare and arid western plains a land
+of lakes, rivers, and luxuriant vegetation, the
+region was inhabited by a race of strange and
+mighty reptiles upon whom science has bestowed
+the appropriate name of Dinosaurs, or
+terrible lizards.</p>
+
+<p>Our acquaintance with the Dinosaurs is
+comparatively recent, dating from the early
+part of the nineteenth century, and in America,
+at least, the date may be set at 1818, when
+the first Dinosaur remains were found in the
+Valley of the Connecticut, although they naturally
+were not recognized as such, nor had the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>term been devised. The first Dinosaur to be
+formally recognized as representing quite a
+new order of reptiles was the carnivorous
+Megalosaur, found near Oxford, England, in
+1824.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_128.jpg" width="400" height="274"  alt="" />
+Fig. 18.&mdash;Thespesius. A Common Herbivorous Dinosaur of the Cretaceous.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by Charles R. Knight.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>For a long time our knowledge of Dinosaurs
+was very imperfect and literally fragmentary,
+depending mostly upon scattered
+teeth, isolated vertebr&aelig;, or fragments of bone
+picked up on the surface or casually encountered
+in some mine or quarry. Now, however,
+thanks mainly to the labors of American pal&aelig;ontologists,
+thanks also to the rich deposits
+of fossils in our Western States, we have an
+extensive knowledge of the Dinosaurs, of their
+size, structure, habits, and general appearance.</p>
+
+<p>There are to-day no animals living that are
+closely related to them; none have lived for a
+long period of time, for the Dinosaurs came to
+an end in the Cretaceous, and it can only be
+said that the crocodiles, on the one hand, and
+the ostriches, on the other, are the nearest existing
+relatives of these great reptiles.</p>
+
+<p>For, though so different in outward appearance,
+birds and reptiles are structurally quite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+closely allied, and the creeping snake and the
+bird on which it preys are relatives, although
+any intimate relationship between them is of
+the serpent's making, and is strongly objected
+to by the bird.</p>
+
+<p>But if we compare the skeleton of a Dinosaur
+with that of an ostrich&mdash;a young one is
+preferable&mdash;and with those of the earlier birds,
+we shall find that many of the barriers now existing
+between reptiles and birds are broken
+down, and that they have many points in common.
+In fact, save in the matter of clothes,
+wherein birds differ from all other animals, the
+two great groups are not so very far apart.</p>
+
+<p>The Dinosaurs were by no means confined
+to North America, although the western United
+States seem to have been their headquarters,
+but ranged pretty much over the world, for
+their remains have been found in every continent,
+even in far-off New Zealand.</p>
+
+<p>In point of time they ranged from the Trias
+to the Upper Cretaceous, their golden age,
+marking the culminating point of reptilian life,
+being in the Jurassic, when huge forms stalked
+by the sea-shore, browsed amid the swamps, or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+disported themselves along the reedy margins
+of lakes and rivers.</p>
+
+<p>They had their day, a day of many thousand
+years, and then passed away, giving
+place to the superior race of mammals which
+was just springing into being when the huge
+Dinosaurs were in the heyday of their existence.</p>
+
+<p>And it does seem as if in the dim and distant
+past, as in the present, brains were a potent
+factor in the struggle for supremacy; for,
+though these reptiles were giants in size, dominating
+the earth through mere brute force,
+they were dwarfs in intellect.</p>
+
+<p>The smallest human brain that is thought to
+be compatible with life itself weighs a little
+over ten ounces, the smallest that can exist
+with reasoning powers is two pounds; this in a
+creature weighing from 120 to 150 pounds.</p>
+
+<p>What do we find among Dinosaurs? Thespesius,
+or Claosaurus, which may have walked
+where Baltimore now stands, was twenty-five
+feet in length and stood a dozen feet high in
+his bare feet, had a brain smaller than a man's
+clenched fist, weighing less than one pound.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Brontosaurus, in some respects the biggest
+brute that ever walked, was but little better off,
+and Triceratops, and his relatives, creatures
+having twice the bulk of an elephant, weighing
+probably over ten tons, possessed a brain weighing
+not over two pounds!</p>
+
+<p>How much of what we term intelligence
+could such a creature possess&mdash;what was the
+extent of its reasoning powers? Judging from
+our own standpoint and the small amount of
+intellect apparent in some humans with much
+larger brains, these big reptiles must have
+known just about enough to have eaten when
+they were hungry, anything more was superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>However, intelligence is one thing, life another,
+and the spinal cord, with its supply of
+nerve-substance, doubtless looked after the
+mere mechanical functions of life; and while
+even the spinal cord is in many cases quite
+small, in some places, particularly in the sacral
+region, it is subject to considerable enlargement.
+This is notably true of Stegosaurus,
+where the sacral enlargement is twenty times
+the bulk of the puny brain&mdash;a fact noted by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+Professor Marsh, and seized upon by the newspapers,
+which announced that he had discovered
+a Dinosaur with a brain in its pelvis.</p>
+
+<p>In their great variety of size and shape the
+Dinosaurs form an interesting parallel with
+the Marsupials of Australia. For just as
+these are, as it were, an epitome of the class
+of mammals, mimicking the herbivores, carnivores,
+rodents and even monkeys, so there
+are carnivorous and herbivorous Dinosaurs&mdash;Dinosaurs
+that dwelt on land and others that
+habitually resided in the water, those that
+walked upright and those that crawled about
+on all fours; and, while there are no hints that
+any possessed the power of flight, some members
+of the group are very bird-like in form
+and structure, so much so that it has been
+thought that the two may have had a common
+ancestry.</p>
+
+<p>The smallest of the Dinosaurs whose acquaintance
+we have made were little larger
+than chickens; the largest claim the distinction
+of being the largest known quadrupeds
+that have walked the face of the earth, the
+giants not only of their day, but of all time,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+before whose huge frames
+the bones of the Mammoth,
+that familiar byword
+for all things great,
+seem slight.</p>
+
+<p><img src="images/i_135.jpg" width="300" height="682"  alt="" class="split" /></p>
+
+<p class="split">Fig. 19&mdash;A Hind Leg
+of the Great Brontosaurus,
+the Largest of the Dinosaurs.</p>
+
+<p>For Brontosaurus, the
+Thunder Lizard, beneath
+whose mighty tread the
+earth shook, and his kindred
+were from 40 to 60
+feet long and 10 to 14 feet
+high, their thigh bones
+measuring 5 to 6 feet in
+length, being the largest
+single bones known to
+us, while some of the
+vertebr&aelig; were 4-1/2 feet
+high, exceeding in dimensions
+those of a whale.</p>
+
+<p>The group to
+which Brontosaurus
+belongs, including
+Diplodocus and
+Morosaurus, is distinguished
+by a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+large, though rather short, body, very long
+neck and tail, and, for the size of the animal,
+a very small head. In fact, the head was so
+small and, in the case of Diplodocus, so poorly
+provided with teeth that it must
+have been quite a task, or a long-continued
+pleasure, according to
+the state of its digestive
+apparatus,
+for the animal to
+have eaten its daily
+meal.</p>
+
+<p><img src="images/i_136.jpg" width="300" height="422"  alt=""  class="splitr" /></p>
+
+<p class="splitr">
+Fig. 20.&mdash;A Single Vertebra of
+Brontosaurus.</p>
+
+<p>An elephant
+weighing 5 tons
+eats 100 pounds of
+hay and 25 pounds
+of grain for his
+day's ration; but,
+as this food is in a
+comparatively concentrated
+form, it
+would require at least twice this weight of
+green fodder.</p>
+
+<p>It is a difficult matter to estimate the weight
+of a live Diplodocus or a Brontosaurus, but it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+is pretty safe to say that it would not be far
+from 20 tons, and that one would devour at
+the very least something over 700 pounds of
+leaves or twigs or plants each day&mdash;more, if
+the animal felt really hungry.</p>
+
+<p>But here we must, even if reluctantly, curb
+our imagination a little and consider another
+point: the cold-blooded, sluggish reptiles, as
+we know them to-day, do not waste their energies
+in rapid movements, or in keeping the
+temperature of their bodies above that of the
+air, and so by no means require the amount
+of food needed by more active, warm-blooded
+animals. Alligators, turtles, and snakes will
+go for weeks, even months, without food, and
+while this applies more particularly to those
+that dwell in temperate climes and during
+their winter hibernation practically suspend
+the functions of digestion and respiration, it is
+more or less true of all reptiles. And as there
+is little reason for supposing that reptiles behaved
+in the past any differently from what
+they do in the present, these great Dinosaurs
+may, after all, not have been gifted with such
+ravenous appetites as one might fancy. Still,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+it is dangerous to lay down any hard and fast
+laws concerning animals, and he who writes
+about them is continually obliged to qualify
+his remarks&mdash;in sporting parlance, to hedge
+a little, and in the present instance there is
+some reason, based on the arrangement of
+vertebr&aelig; and ribs, to suppose that the lungs
+of Dinosaurs were somewhat like those of
+birds, and that, as a corollary, their blood may
+have been better a&euml;rated and warmer than
+that of living reptiles. But, to return to the
+question of food.</p>
+
+<p>From the peculiar character of the articulations
+of the limb-bones, it is inferred that these
+animals were largely aquatic in their habits,
+and fed on some abundant species of water
+plants. One can readily see the advantage of
+the long neck in browsing off the vegetation
+on the bottom of shallow lakes, while the animal
+was submerged, or in rearing the head
+aloft to scan the surrounding shores for the
+approach of an enemy. Or, with the tail as a
+counterpoise, the entire body could be reared
+out of water and the head be raised some thirty
+feet in the air.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Triceratops, he of the three-horned face, had
+a remarkable skull which projected backward
+over the neck, like a fireman's helmet, or a
+sunbonnet worn hind side before, while over
+each eye was a massive horn directed forward,
+a third, but much smaller horn being sometimes
+present on the nose.</p>
+
+<p>The little "Horned Toad," which isn't a
+toad at all, is the nearest suggestion we have
+to-day of Triceratops; but, could he realize
+the ambition of the frog in the fable and
+swell himself to the dimensions of an ox, he
+would even then be but a pigmy compared
+with his ancient and distant relative.</p>
+
+<p>So far as mere appearance goes he would
+compare very well, for while so much is said
+about the strange appearance of the Dinosaurs,
+it is to be borne in mind that their peculiarities
+are enhanced by their size, and that there
+are many lizards of to-day that lack only
+stature to be even more <i>bizarre</i>; and, for example,
+were the Australian Moloch but big
+enough, he could give even Stegosaurus
+"points" in more ways than one.</p>
+
+<p>Standing before the skull of Triceratops,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>looking him squarely in the face, one notices
+in front of each eye a thick guard of projecting
+bone, and while this must have interfered with
+vision directly ahead it must have also furnished
+protection for the eye. So long as Triceratops
+faced an adversary he must have
+been practically invulnerable, but as he was
+the largest animal of his time, upward of
+twenty-five feet in length, it is probable that
+his combats were mainly with those of his own
+kind and the subject of dispute some fair female
+upon whom two rival suitors had cast
+covetous eyes. What a sight it would have
+been to have seen two of these big brutes in
+mortal combat as they charged upon each
+other with all the impetus to be derived from
+ten tons of infuriate flesh! We may picture to
+ourselves horn clashing upon horn, or glancing
+from each bony shield until some skilful stroke
+or unlucky slip placed one combatant at the
+mercy of the other, and he went down before
+the blows of his adversary "as falls on Mount
+Alvernus a thunder-smitten oak."</p>
+
+<p>A pair of Triceratops horns in the National
+Museum bears witness to such encounters, for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+one is broken midway between tip and base;
+and that it was broken during life is evident
+from the fact that the stump is healed and
+rounded over, while the size of the horns shows
+that their owner reached a ripe old age.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_140.jpg" width="400" height="254"  alt="" />
+Fig. 21.&mdash;Moloch. A Modern Lizard that Surpasses the Stegosaurs in All but Size.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>For, unlike man and the higher vertebrates,
+reptiles and fishes do not have a maximum
+standard of size which is soon reached and
+rarely exceeded, but continue to grow
+throughout life, so that the size of a turtle, a
+crocodile, or a Dinosaur tells something of the
+duration of its life.</p>
+
+<p>Before quitting Triceratops let us glance for
+a moment at its skeleton. Now among other
+things a skeleton is the solution of a problem
+in mechanics, and in Triceratops the head so
+dominates the rest of the structure that one
+might almost imagine the skull was made first
+and the body adjusted to it. The great head
+seems made not only for offence and defence;
+the spreading frill serves for the attachment
+of muscles to sustain the weight of the skull,
+while the work of the muscles is made easier
+by the fact that the frill reaches so far back
+of the junction of head with neck as to largely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+counterbalance the
+weight of the face
+and jaws. When
+we restored the
+skull of this animal
+it was found
+that the centre of
+gravity lay back of
+the eye. Several
+of the bones of the
+neck are united in
+one mass to furnish
+a firm attachment
+for the muscles
+that support
+and move the
+skull, but as the
+movements of the
+neck are already
+restricted by the
+overhanging frill,
+this loss of motion
+is no additional disadvantage.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_144.jpg" width="400" height="164"  alt="" />
+TRICERATOPS PRORSUS Marsh
+Fig. 22.&mdash;Skeleton of Triceratops.
+</div>
+
+<p>To support all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+this weight of skull and body requires very
+massive legs, and as the fore legs are very
+short, this enables Triceratops to browse comfortably
+from the ground by merely lowering
+the front of the head.</p>
+
+<p>These forms we have been considering were
+the giants of the group, but a commoner species,
+Thespesius, though less in bulk than those
+just mentioned, was still of goodly proportions,
+for, as he stalked about, the top of his head
+was twelve feet from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Thespesius and his kin seem to have been
+comparatively abundant, for they have a wide
+distribution, and many specimens, some almost
+perfect, have been discovered in this country
+and abroad. No less than twenty-nine Iguanodons,
+a European relative of Thespesius,
+were found in one spot in mining for coal at
+Bernissart, Belgium. Here, during long years
+of Cretaceous time, a river slowly cut its way
+through the coal-bearing strata to a depth of
+750 feet, a depth almost twice as great as
+the deepest part of the gorge of Niagara,
+and then, this being accomplished, began the
+work of filling up the valley it had excavated.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was then a sluggish stream with marshy
+borders, a stream subject to frequent floods,
+when the water, turbid with mud and laden
+with sand, overflowed its banks, leaving them,
+as the waters subsided, covered thickly with
+mud. Here, amidst the luxuriant vegetation
+of a semi-tropical climate, lived and died the
+Iguanodons, and here the pick of the miner
+rescued them from their long entombment to
+form part of the treasures of the museum at
+Brussels.</p>
+
+<p>Like other reptiles, living and extinct, Thespesius
+was continually renewing his teeth, so
+that as fast as one tooth was worn out it was
+replaced by another, a point wherein Thespesius
+had a decided advantage over ourselves.
+On the other hand, as there was a reserve supply
+of something like 400 teeth in the lower
+jaw alone, what an opportunity for the toothache!</p>
+
+<p>And then we have a multitude of lesser Dinosaurs,
+including the active, predatory species
+with sharp claws and double-edged teeth.
+Megalosaurus, the first of the Dinosaurs to be
+really known, was one of these carnivorous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+species, and from our West comes a near relative,
+Ceratosaurus, the nose-horned lizard, a
+queer beast with tiny fore legs, powerful, sharp-clawed
+hind feet, and well-armed jaws. A
+most formidable foe he seems, the more that
+the hollow bones speak of active movements,
+and Professor Cope pictured him, or a near
+relative, vigorously engaged in combat with
+his fellows, or preying upon the huge but helpless
+herbivores of the marshes, leaping, biting,
+and tearing his enemy to pieces with tooth and
+claw.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Osborn, on the other hand, is inclined
+to consider him as a reptilian hyena,
+feeding upon carrion, although one can but
+feel that such an armament is not entirely in
+the interests of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Last, but by no means least, are the Stegosaurs,
+or plated lizards, for not only were they
+beasts of goodly size, but they were among the
+most singular of all known animals, singular
+even for Dinosaurs. They had diminutive
+heads, small fore legs, long tails armed on
+either side near the tip, with two pairs of large
+spines, while from these spines to the neck
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>ran series of large, but thin, and sharp-edged
+plates standing on edge, so that their backs
+looked like the bottom of a boat provided with
+a number of little centreboards. Just how
+these plates were arranged is not decided beyond
+a peradventure, but while originally figured
+as having them in a single series down
+the back it seems much more probable that
+they formed parallel rows.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_148.jpg" width="400" height="226"  alt="" />
+Fig. 23.&mdash;The Horned Ceratosaurus. A Carnivorous Dinosaur.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>The largest of these plates were two feet in
+height and length, and not more than an inch
+thick, except at the base, where they were enlarged
+and roughened to give a firm hold to
+the thick skin in which they were imbedded.
+Be it remembered, too, that these plates and
+spines were doubtless covered with horn, so
+that they were even longer in life than as we
+now see them. The tail spines varied in length,
+according to the species, from eight or nine
+inches to nearly three feet, and some of them
+have a diameter of six inches at the base.
+They were swung by a tail eight to ten feet
+long, and as a visitor was heard to remark, one
+wouldn't like to be about such an animal in
+fly time.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such were some of the strange and mighty
+animals that once roamed this continent from
+the valley of the Connecticut, where they literally
+left their footprints on the sands of time,
+to the Rocky Mountains, where the ancient
+lakes and rivers became cemeteries for the entombment
+of their bones.</p>
+
+<p>The labor of the collector has gathered their
+fossil remains from many a Western canyon,
+the skill of the preparator has removed them
+from their stony sepulchres and the study of
+the anatomist has restored them as they were
+in life.</p>
+
+<p><i>REFERENCES.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Most of our large museums have on exhibition fine
+specimens of many Dinosaurs, comprising skulls, limbs,
+and large portions of their skeletons. The American
+Museum of Natural History, New York, has the largest
+and finest display. The first actual skeleton of a Dinosaur
+to be mounted in this country was the splendid Claosaurus
+at the Yale University Museum, where other striking
+pieces are also to be seen. The mounting of this
+Claosaurus, which is 29 feet long and 13 feet high, took
+an entire year. The United States National Museum is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+particularly rich in examples of the great, horned Triceratops,
+while the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, has
+the best Diplodocus. The Field Columbian Museum and
+the Universities of Wyoming and Colorado all have good
+collections.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_152.jpg" width="400" height="265"  alt="" />
+Fig. 24.&mdash;Stegosaurus. An Armored Dinosaur of the Jurassic.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by Charles R. Knight.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>The largest single bone of a Dinosaur is the thigh
+bone of a Brontosaurus in the Field Columbian Museum,
+this measuring 6 feet 8 inches in length. The height of
+a complete hind leg in the American Museum of Natural
+History is 10 feet, while a single claw measures 6 by 9
+inches. The skeleton of Triceratops restored in papier-mach&eacute;
+for the Pan-American Exposition measured 25
+feet from tip of nose to end of tail and was 10 feet 6
+inches to the top of the backbone over the hips, this being
+the highest point. The head in the United States National
+Museum used as a model is 5 feet 6 inches long
+in a straight line and 4 feet 3 inches across the frill.
+There is a skull in the Yale University Museum even
+larger than this.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Articles relating to Dinosaurs are mostly technical in
+their nature and scattered through various scientific journals.
+The most accessible probably is "The Dinosaurs of
+North America," by Professor O. C. Marsh, published as
+part of the sixteenth annual report of the United States
+Geological Survey. This contains many figures of the
+skulls, bones, and entire skeletons of many Dinosaurs.</i></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_155.jpg" width="400" height="237"  alt="" />
+Fig. 25.&mdash;Skull of Ceratosaurus.
+<br />
+<i>From a specimen in the United States National Museum.</i>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">READING THE RIDDLES OF THE ROCKS</p>
+
+<div class="inset20">
+<p>
+"<i>And the first Morning of Creation wrote<br />
+What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.</i>"<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is quite possible that the reader may wish
+to know something of the manner in which
+the specimens described in these pages have
+been gathered, how we acquire our knowledge
+of Brontosaurus, Claosaurus, or any of the
+many other "sauruses," and how their restorations
+have been made.</p>
+
+<p>There was a time, not so very long ago,
+when fossils were looked upon as mere sports
+of Nature, and little attention paid to them;
+later their true nature was recognized, though
+they were merely gathered haphazard as occasion
+might offer. But now, and for many
+years past, the fossil-bearing rocks of many
+parts of the world have been systematically
+worked, and from the material thus obtained<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+we have acquired a great deal of information
+regarding the inhabitants of the ancient world.
+This is particularly true of our own western
+country, where a vast amount of collecting has
+been done, although very much remains to be
+done in the matter of perfecting this knowledge,
+and hosts of new animals remain to be
+discovered. For this information we are almost
+as much indebted to the collector who has
+gathered the needed material, and the preparator
+whose patience and skill have made it
+available for study, as to the pal&aelig;ontologist
+who has interpreted the meaning of the
+bones.</p>
+
+<p>To collect successfully demands not only
+a knowledge of the rocks in which fossils
+occur and of the localities where they are best
+exposed to view, but an eye quick to detect a
+piece of bone protruding from a rock or lying
+amongst the shale, and, above all, the ability
+to work a deposit to advantage after it has
+been found. The collector of living animals
+hies to regions where there is plenty for bird
+and beast to eat and drink, but the collector of
+extinct animals cares little for what is on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+surface of the earth; his great desire is to see
+as much as possible of what may lie beneath.
+So the prospector in search of fossils betakes
+himself to some region where the ceaseless
+warfare waged by water against the dry land
+has seamed the face of the earth with countless
+gullies and canyons, or carved it into slopes
+and bluffs in which the edges of the bone-bearing
+strata are exposed to view, and along
+these he skirts, ever on the look-out for some
+projecting bit of bone. The country is an
+almost shadeless desert, burning hot by day,
+uncomfortably cool at night. Water is scarce,
+and when it can be found, often has little to
+commend it save wetness; but the collector is
+buoyed up through all this with the hope that
+he may discover some creature new to science
+that shall not only be bigger and uglier and
+stranger than any heretofore found, but shall
+be the long-sought form needed for the solution
+of some difficult problem in the history
+of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Now collecting is a lottery, differing from
+most lotteries, however, in that while some of
+the returns may be pretty small, there are few<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+absolute blanks and some remarkably large
+prizes, and every collector hopes that it may
+fall to his lot to win one of these, and is willing
+to work long and arduously for the chance of
+obtaining it.</p>
+
+<p>It may give some idea of the chances to say
+that some years ago Dr. Wortman spent almost
+an entire season in the field without success,
+and then, at the eleventh hour, found the
+now famous skeleton of Phenacodus, or that a
+party from Princeton actually camped within
+100 yards of a rich deposit of rare fossils and
+yet failed to discover it.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, however, suppose that the reconnaissance
+has been successful, and that an outcrop
+of bone has been found, serving like a tombstone
+carven with strange characters to indicate
+the burial-place of some primeval monster.
+Possibly Nature long ago rifled the grave, washing
+away much of the skeleton, and leaving
+little save the fragments visible on the surface;
+on the other hand, these pieces may form part
+of a complete skeleton, and there is no way to
+decide this important question save by actual
+excavation. The manner of disinterment varies,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+but much depends on whether the fossil
+lies in comparatively loose shale or is imbedded
+in the solid rock, whether the strata are level
+or dip downward into the hillside. If, unfortunately,
+this last is the case, it necessitates a
+careful shoring up of the excavation with props
+of cotton-wood or such boards as may have
+been brought along to box specimens, or it may
+even be necessary to run a short tunnel in order
+to get at some coveted bone. Should the
+specimen lie in shale, as is the case with most
+of the large reptiles that have been collected,
+much of that work may be done with pick and
+shovel; but if it is desirable or necessary to
+work in firm rock, drills and hammers, wedges,
+even powder, may be needed to rend from Nature
+her long-kept secrets. In any event, a
+detailed plan is made of the excavation, and
+each piece of bone or section of rock duly recorded
+therein by letter and number, so that
+later on the relation of the parts to one another
+may be known, or the various sections assembled
+in the work-room exactly as they lay
+in the quarry. Bones which lie in loose rock
+are often, one might say usually, more or less<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+broken, and when a bone three, four, or even
+six feet long, weighing anywhere from 100 to
+1,000 pounds, has been shattered to fragments
+the problem of removing it is no easy one.
+But here the skill of the collector comes into
+play to treat the fossil as a surgeon treats a
+fractured limb, to cover it with plaster bandages,
+and brace it with splints of wood or iron
+so that the specimen may not only be taken
+from the ground but endure in safety the coming
+journey of a thousand or more miles. For
+simpler cases or lighter objects strips of sacking,
+or even paper, applied with flour and water,
+suffice, or pieces of sacking soaked in thin plaster
+may be laid over the bone, first covering it
+with thin paper in order that the plaster jacket
+may simply stiffen and not adhere to it. Collecting
+has not always been carried on in this
+systematic manner, for the development of the
+present methods has been the result of years of
+experience; formerly there was a mere skimming-over
+of the surface in what Professor
+Marsh used to term the potato-gathering style,
+but now the effort is made to remove specimens
+intact, often imbedded in large masses<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+of rock, in order that all parts may be preserved.</p>
+
+<p>We will take it for granted that our specimens
+have safely passed through all perils by
+land and water, road and rail; that they have
+been quarried, boxed, carted over a roadless
+country to the nearest railway, and have withstood
+2,000 miles of jolting in a freight-car.
+The first step in reconstruction has been taken;
+the problem, now that the boxes are reposing
+on the work-room floor, is to make the blocks
+of stone give up the secrets they have guarded
+for ages, to free the bones from their enveloping
+matrix in order that they may tell us
+something of the life of the past. The method
+of doing this varies with the conditions under
+which the material has been gathered, and if
+from hard clay, chalk, or shale, the process,
+though tedious enough at best, is by no means
+so difficult as if the specimens are imbedded
+in solid rock. In this case the fragments
+from a given section of quarry must be assembled
+according to the plan which has been
+carefully made as the work of exhumation
+progressed, all pieces containing bone must be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+stuck together, and weak parts strengthened
+with gum or glue. Now the mass is attacked
+with hammer and chisel, and the surrounding
+matrix slowly and carefully cut away until the
+contained bone is revealed, a process much
+simpler and more expeditious in the telling
+than in the actuality; for the preparator may
+not use the heavy tools of the ordinary stone-cutter:
+sometimes an awl, or even a glover's
+needle, must suffice him, and the chips cut off
+are so small and such care must be taken not
+to injure the bone that the work is really tedious.
+This may, perhaps, be better appreciated
+by saying that to clean a single vertebra
+of such a huge Dinosaur as Diplodocus may
+require a month of continuous labor, and that
+a score of these big and complicated bones,
+besides others of simpler structure, are included
+in the backbone. The finished specimen
+weighs over 120 pounds, while as originally
+collected, with all the adherent rock, the
+weight was twice or thrice as great. Such a
+mass as this is comparatively small, and sometimes
+huge blocks are taken containing entire
+skulls or a number of bones, and not infrequently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+weighing a ton. The largest single
+specimen is a skull of Triceratops, collected
+by Mr. J. B. Hatcher, which weighed, when
+boxed, 3,650 pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Or, as the result of some mishap, or through
+the work of an inexperienced collector, a valuable
+specimen may arrive in the shape of a
+box full of irregular fragments of stone compared
+with which a dissected map or an old-fashioned
+Chinese puzzle is simplicity itself,
+and one may spend hours looking for some
+piece whose proper location gives the clew to
+an entire section, and days, even, may be consumed
+before the task is completed. While
+this not only tries the patience, but the eyes
+as well, there is, nevertheless, a fascination
+about this work of fashioning a bone out of
+scores, possibly hundreds, of fragments, and
+watching the irregular bits of stone shaping
+themselves into a mosaic that forms a portion
+of some creature, possibly quite new to science,
+and destined to bear a name as long as
+itself. And thus, after many days of toil, the
+bone that millions of years before sank into
+the mud of some old lake-bottom or was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+buried in the sandy shoals of an ancient river,
+is brought to light once more to help tell the
+tale of the creatures of the past.</p>
+
+<p>One bone might convey a great deal of information;
+on the other hand it might reveal
+very little; for, while it is very painful to say
+so, the popular impression that it is possible to
+reconstruct an animal from a single bone, or
+tell its size and habits from a tooth is but
+partially correct, and sometimes "the eminent
+scientist" has come to grief even with a great
+many bones at his disposal. Did not one of
+the ablest anatomists describe and figure the
+hip-bones of a Dinosaur as its shoulder-blade,
+and another, equally able, reconstruct a reptile
+"hind side before," placing the head on the
+tail! This certainly sounds absurd enough;
+but just as absurd mistakes are made by men
+in other walks of life, often with far more deplorable
+results.</p>
+
+<p>Before passing to the restoration of the exterior
+of animals it may be well to say something
+of the manner in which the skeleton of
+an extinct animal may be reconstructed and
+the meaning of its various parts interpreted.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+For the adjustment of the muscles is dependent
+on the structure of the skeleton, and putting
+on the muscles means blocking out the
+form, details of external appearance being supplied
+by the skin and its accessories of hair,
+scales, or horns. Let us suppose in the present
+instance that we are dealing with one of the
+great reptiles known as Triceratops whose remains
+are among the treasures of the National
+Museum at Washington, for the reconstruction
+of the big beast well illustrates the methods
+of the pal&aelig;ontologist and also the troubles
+by which he is beset. Moreover, this is not a
+purely imaginary case, but one that is very
+real, for the skeleton of this animal which was
+shown at Buffalo was restored in papier-mach&eacute;
+in exactly the manner indicated. We have a
+goodly number of bones, but by no means an
+entire skeleton, and yet we wish to complete
+the skeleton and incidentally to form some
+idea of the creature's habits. Now we can interpret
+the past only by a knowledge of the
+present, and it is by carefully studying the
+skeletons of the animals of to-day that we can
+learn to read the meaning of the symbols of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+bones left by the animals of a million yesterdays.
+Thus we find that certain characters
+distinguish the bone of a mammal from that
+of a bird, a reptile, or a fish, and these in turn
+from one another, and this constitutes the
+A B C of comparative anatomy. And, in a
+like manner, the bones of the various divisions
+of these main groups have to a greater or less
+extent their own distinguishing characteristics,
+so that by first comparing the bones of extinct
+animals with those of creatures that are now
+living we are enabled to recognize their nearest
+existing relative, and then by comparing them
+with one another we learn the relations they
+bore in the ancient world. But it must be
+borne in mind that some of the early beasts
+were so very different from those of to-day
+that until pretty much their entire structure
+was known there was nothing with which to
+compare odd bones. Had but a single incomplete
+specimen of Triceratops come to light
+we should be very much in the dark concerning
+him; and although remains of some thirty
+individuals have been discovered, these have
+been so imperfect that we are very far from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+having all the information we need. A great
+part of the head, with its formidable looking
+horns, is present, and although the nose is
+gone, we know from other specimens that it,
+too, was armed with a knob, or horn, and that
+the skull ended in a beak, something like that
+of a snapping turtle, though formed by a separate
+and extra bone; similarly the end of the
+lower jaw is lacking, but we may be pretty
+certain that it ended in a beak, to match that
+of the skull. The large leg-bones of our specimen
+are mostly represented, for these being
+among the more solid parts of the skeleton
+are more frequently preserved than any others,
+and though some are from one side and some
+from another, this matters not. If the hind
+legs were disproportionately long it would indicate
+that our animal often or habitually
+walked erect, but as there is only difference
+enough between the fore and hind limbs to
+enable Triceratops to browse comfortably from
+the ground we would naturally place him on
+all fours, even were the skull not so large as to
+make the creature too top-heavy for any other
+mode of locomotion. Were the limbs very<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+small in comparison with the other bones, it
+would obviously mean that their owner passed
+his life in the water. For a skeleton has a twofold
+meaning, it is the best, the most enduring,
+testimony we have as to an animal's place in
+nature and the relationships it sustains to the
+creatures that lived with it, before it, and after
+it. More than this, a skeleton is the solution
+of a problem in mechanics, the problem of
+carrying a given weight and of adaptation to
+a given mode of life. Thus the skeleton varies
+according as a creature dwells on land, in the
+water, or in the air, and according as it feeds
+on grass or preys upon its fellows.</p>
+
+<p>And so the mechanics of a skeleton afford
+us a clew to the habits of the living animal.
+Something, too, may be gathered from the
+structure of the leg-bones, for solid bones mean
+either a sluggish animal or a creature of more
+or less aquatic habits, while hollow bones emphatically
+declare a land animal, and an active
+one at that; and this, in the case of the Dinosaurs,
+hints at predatory habits, the ability to
+catch and eat their defenceless and more sluggish
+brethren. A claw, or, better yet, a tooth,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+may confirm or refute this hint; for a blunt claw
+could not be used in tearing prey limb from
+limb, nor would a double-edged tooth, made
+for rending flesh, serve for champing grass.</p>
+
+<p>But few bones of the feet, and especially the
+fore feet, are present, these smaller parts of the
+skeleton having been washed away before the
+ponderous frame was buried in the sand, and
+the best that can be done is to follow the law
+of probabilities and put three toes on the hind
+foot and five on the fore, two of these last
+without claws. The single blunt round claw
+among our bones shows, as do the teeth, that
+Triceratops was herbivorous; it also pointed a
+little downward, and this tells that in the living
+animal the sole of the foot was a thick, soft
+pad, somewhat as it is in the elephant and rhinoceros,
+and that the toes were not entirely
+free from one another. There are less than a
+dozen vertebr&aelig; and still fewer ribs, besides
+half a barrelful of pieces, from which to reconstruct
+a backbone twenty feet long. That the
+ribs are part from one side and part from another
+matters no more than it did in the case
+of the leg-bones; but the backbone presents a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+more difficult problem, since the pieces are not
+like so many checkers&mdash;all made after one pattern&mdash;but
+each has an individuality of its own.
+The total number of vertebr&aelig; must be guessed
+at (perhaps it would sound better to say estimated,
+but it really means the same), and
+knowing that some sections are from the front
+part of the vertebral column and some from
+the back, we must fill in the gaps as best we
+may. The ribs offer a little aid in this task,
+giving certain details of the vertebr&aelig;, while
+those in turn tell something about the adjoining
+parts of the ribs. We finish our Triceratops
+with a tail of moderate length, as indicated
+by the rapid taper of the few vertebr&aelig;
+available, and from these we gather, too, that
+in life the tail was round, and not flattened,
+and that it neither served for swimming nor
+for a balancing pole. And so, little by little,
+have been pieced together the fragments from
+which we have derived our knowledge of the
+past, and thus has the pal&aelig;ontologist read the
+riddles of the rocks.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_172.jpg" width="400" height="273"  alt="" />
+Fig. 26.&mdash;Triceratops, He of the Three-horned Face.
+<br />
+<i>From a statuette by Charles R. Knight.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>To make these dry bones live again, to
+clothe them with flesh and reconstruct the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+creature as he was or may have been in life,
+is, to be honest, very largely guesswork,
+though to make a guess that shall come anywhere
+near the mark not only demands a
+thorough knowledge of anatomy&mdash;for the
+basis of all restoration must be the skeleton&mdash;but
+calls for more than a passing acquaintance
+with the external appearance of living animals.
+And while there is nothing in the bones to
+tell how an animal is, or was, clad, they will at
+least show to what group the creature belonged,
+and, that known, there are certain
+probabilities in the case. A bird, for example,
+would certainly be clad in feathers. Going a
+little farther, we might be pretty sure that
+the feathers of a water-fowl would be thick
+and close; those of strictly terrestrial birds,
+such as the ostrich and other flightless forms,
+lax and long. These as general propositions;
+of course, in special cases, one might easily
+come to grief, as in dealing with birds like
+penguins, which are particularly adapted for
+an aquatic life, and have the feathers highly
+modified. These birds depend upon their fat,
+and not on their feathers, for warmth, and so
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+their feathers have become a sort of cross between
+scales and hairs. Hair and fur belong
+to mammals only, although these creatures
+show much variety in their outer covering.
+The thoroughly marine whales have discarded
+furs and adopted a smooth and slippery skin,<a id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+well adapted to movement through the water,
+relying for warmth on a thick undershirt of
+blubber. The earless seals that pass much of
+their time on the ice have just enough hair
+to keep them from absolute contact with it,
+warmth again being provided for by blubber.
+The fur seals, which for several months in the
+year dwell largely on land, have a coat of fur
+and hair, although warmth is mostly furnished,
+or rather kept in, by fat.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>The reader is warned that this is a mere figure of speech,
+for, of course, the process of adaptation to surroundings is
+passive, not active, although there is a most unfortunate tendency
+among writers on evolution, and particularly on mimicry,
+to speak of it as active. The writer believes that no animal
+in the first stages of mimicry, consciously mimics or endeavors
+to resemble another animal or any part of its surroundings,
+but a habit at first accidental may in time become
+more or less conscious.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>No reptile, therefore, would be covered with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>feathers, neither, judging from those we
+know to-day, would they be clad in fur or
+hair; but, such coverings being barred out,
+there remain a great variety of plates and
+scales to choose from. Folds and frills, crests
+and dewlaps, like beauty, are but skin deep,
+and, being thus superficial, ordinarily leave no
+trace of their former presence, and in respect
+to them the reconstructor must trust to his
+imagination, with the law of probabilities as a
+check rein to his fancy. This law would tell us
+that such ornaments must not be so placed as
+to be in the way, and that while there would be
+a possibility&mdash;one might even say probability&mdash;of
+the great, short-headed, iguana-like
+Dinosaurs having dewlaps, that there would
+be no great likelihood of their possessing ruffs
+such as that of the Australian Chlamydosaurus
+(mantled lizard) to flap about their ears.
+Even Stegosaurus, with his bizarre array of
+great plates and spines, kept them on his
+back, out of the way. Such festal ornamentation
+would, however, more likely be found in
+small, active creatures, the larger beasts contenting
+themselves with plates and folds.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Spines and plates usually leave some trace
+of their existence, for they consist of a super-structure
+of skin or horn, built on a foundation
+of bone; and while even horn decomposes
+too quickly to "petrify," the bone will
+become fossilized and changed into enduring
+stone. But while this affords a pretty sure
+guide to the general shape of the investing
+horn, it does not give all the details, and there
+may have been ridges and furrows and sculpturing
+that we know not of.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing, then, what the probabilities are, we
+have some guide to the character of the covering
+that should be placed on an animal, and if
+we may not be sure as to what should be done,
+we may be pretty certain what should not.</p>
+
+<p>For example, to depict a Dinosaur with
+smooth, rubbery hide walking about on dry
+land would be to violate the probabilities, for
+only such exclusively aquatic creatures as the
+whales among mammals, and the salamanders
+among batrachians, are clothed in smooth,
+shiny skin. There might, however, be reason
+to suspect that a creature largely aquatic in its
+habits did occasionally venture on land, as, for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+instance, when vertebr&aelig; that seem illy adapted
+for carrying the weight of a land animal are
+found in company with huge limb-bones and
+massive feet we may feel reasonably certain
+that their owner passed at least a portion of his
+time on <i>terra firma</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the probabilities as to the covering
+of animals known to us only by their fossil
+remains; but it is often possible to go beyond
+this, and to state certainly how they were
+clad. For while the chances are small that
+any trace of the covering of an extinct animal,
+other than bony plates, will be preserved, Nature
+does now and then seem to have relented,
+and occasionally some animal settled to rest
+where it was so quickly and quietly covered
+with fine mud that the impression of small
+scales, feathers, or even smooth skin, was preserved;
+curiously enough, there seems to be
+scarcely any record of the imprint of hair.
+Then, too, it is to be remembered that while
+the chances were very much against such preservation,
+in the thousands or millions of times
+creatures died the millionth chance might come
+uppermost.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Silhouettes of those marine reptiles, the Ichthyosaurs,
+have been found, probably made by
+the slow carbonization of animal matter, showing
+not only the form of the body and tail, but
+revealing the existence of an unsuspected back
+fin. And yet these animals were apparently
+clad in a skin as thin and smooth as that of a
+whale. Impressions of feathers were known
+long before the discovery of Arch&aelig;opteryx; a
+few have been found in the Green River and
+Florissant shales of Wyoming, and a Hesperornis
+in the collection of the State University
+of Kansas shows traces of the existence of
+long, soft feathers on the legs and very clear
+imprints of the scales and reticulated skin that
+covered the tarsus. From the Chalk of Kansas,
+too, came the example of Tylosaur, showing
+that the back of this animal was decorated
+with the crest shown in Mr. Knight's restoration,
+one not unlike that of the modern iguana.
+From the Laramie sandstone of Montana Mr.
+Hatcher and Mr. Butler have obtained the impressions
+of portions of the skin of the great
+Dinosaur, Thespesius, which show that the
+covering of this animal consisted largely, if not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+entirely, of small, irregularly hexagonal horny
+scutes, slightly thickened in the centre. The
+quarries of lithographic stone at Solenhofen
+have yielded a few specimens of flying reptiles,
+pterodactyls, which not only verify the correctness
+of the inference that these creatures possessed
+membranous wings, like the bats, but
+show the exact shape, and it was sometimes
+very curious, of this membrane. And each and
+all of these wonderfully preserved specimens
+serve both to check and guide the restorer
+in his task of clothing the animal as it was in
+life.</p>
+
+<p>And all this help is needed, for it is an easy
+matter to make a wide-sweeping deduction,
+apparently resting on a good basis of fact, and
+yet erroneous. Remains of the Mammoth
+and Woolly Rhinoceros, found in Siberia and
+Northern Europe, were thought to indicate
+that at the period when these animals lived
+the climate was mild, a very natural inference,
+since the elephants and rhinoceroses we now
+know are all inhabitants of tropical climes.
+But the discovery of more or less complete
+specimens makes it evident that the climate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+was not particularly mild; the animals were
+simply adapted to it; instead of being naked
+like their modern relatives, they were dressed
+for the climate in a woolly covering. We
+think of the tiger as prowling through the
+jungles of India, but he ranges so far north
+that in some localities this beast preys upon
+reindeer, which are among the most northern
+of large mammals, and there the tiger is clad
+in fairly thick fur.</p>
+
+<p>When we come to coloring a reconstructed
+animal we have absolutely no guide, unless we
+assume that the larger a creature the more soberly
+will it be colored. The great land animals
+of to-day, the elephant and rhinoceros, to
+say nothing of the aquatic hippopotamus, are
+very dully colored, and while this sombre coloration
+is to-day a protection, rendering these
+animals less easily seen by man than they
+otherwise would be, yet at the time this color
+was developing man was not nor were there
+enemies sufficiently formidable to menace the
+race of elephantine creatures.</p>
+
+<p>For where mere size furnishes sufficient protection
+one would hardly expect to find protective<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+coloration as well, unless indeed a
+creature preyed upon others, when it might be
+advantageous to enable a predatory animal to
+steal upon its prey.</p>
+
+<p>Color often exists (or is supposed to) as a
+sexual characteristic, to render the male of a
+species attractive to, or readily recognizable
+by, the female, but in the case of large animals
+mere size is quite enough to render them conspicuous,
+and possibly this may be one of the
+factors in the dull coloration of large animals.</p>
+
+<p>So while a green and yellow Triceratops
+would undoubtedly have been a conspicuous
+feature in the Cretaceous landscape, from what
+we know of existing animals it seems best to
+curb our fancy and, so far as large Dinosaurs
+are concerned, employ the colors of a Rembrandt
+rather than those of a sign painter.</p>
+
+<p>Aids, or at least hints, to the coloration of
+extinct animals are to be found in the coloration
+of the young of various living species, for
+as the changes undergone by the embryo are
+in a measure an epitome of the changes undergone
+by a species during its evolution, so the
+brief color phases or markings of the young<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+are considered to represent the ordinary coloring
+of distant ancestors. Young thrushes are
+spotted, young ostriches and grebes are irregularly
+striped, young lions are spotted, and in
+restoring the early horse, or Hyracothere, Professor
+Osborn had the animal represented as
+faintly striped, for the reason that zebras, the
+wild horses of to-day, are striped, and because
+the ass, which is a primitive type of horse, is
+striped over the shoulders, these being hints
+that the earlier horse-like forms were also
+striped.</p>
+
+<p>Thus just as the skeleton of a Dinosaur may
+be a composite structure, made up of the
+bones of a dozen individuals, and these in turn
+mosaics of many fragments, so may the semblance
+of the living animal be based on a fact,
+pieced out with a probability and completed
+by a bit of theory.</p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>There is a large series of restorations of extinct animals,
+prepared by Mr. Charles R. Knight, under the
+direction of Professor Osborn, in the Hall of Pal&aelig;ontology
+of the American Museum of Natural History,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+and these are later to be reproduced and issued in portfolio
+form.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Should the reader visit Princeton, he may see in the
+museum there a number of B. Waterhouse Hawkins's
+creations&mdash;creations is the proper word&mdash;which are of
+interest as examples of the early work in this line.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The "Report of the Smithsonian Institution for
+1900" contains an article on "The Restoration of
+Extinct Animals," pages 479-492, which includes a
+number of plates showing the progress that has been
+made in this direction.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_184.jpg" width="400" height="179"  alt="" />
+Fig. 27.&mdash;A Hint of Buried Treasures.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">FEATHERED GIANTS</p>
+
+<div class="inset20">
+<p>
+<i>"There were giants in the earth in those days."</i><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nearly every group of animals has its giants,
+its species which tower above their fellows as
+Goliath of Gath stood head and shoulders
+above the Philistine hosts; and while some of
+these are giants only in comparison with their
+fellows, belonging to families whose members
+are short of stature, others are sufficiently
+great to be called giants under any circumstances.
+Some of these giants live to-day,
+some have but recently passed away, and some
+ceased to be long ages before man trod this
+earth. The most gigantic of mammals&mdash;the
+whales&mdash;still survive, and the elephant of to-day
+suffers but little in comparison with the
+mammoth of yesterday; the monstrous Dinosaurs,
+greatest of all reptiles&mdash;greatest, in
+fact, of all animals that have walked the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+earth&mdash;flourished thousands upon thousands
+of years ago. As for birds, some of the giants
+among them are still living, some existed long
+geologic periods ago, and a few have so recently
+vanished from the scene that their
+memory still lingers amid the haze of tradition.
+The best known among these, as well as the
+most recent in point of time, are the Moas of
+New Zealand, first brought to notice by the
+Rev. W. Colenso, later on Bishop of New
+Zealand, one of the many missionaries to
+whom Science is under obligations. Early in
+1838, Bishop Colenso, while on a missionary
+visit to the East Cape region, heard from the
+natives of Waiapu tales of a monstrous bird,
+called Moa, having the head of a man, that
+inhabited the mountain-side some eighty miles
+away. This mighty bird, the last of his race,
+was said to be attended by two equally huge
+lizards that kept guard while he slept, and on
+the approach of man wakened the Moa, who
+immediately rushed upon the intruders and
+trampled them to death. None of the Maoris
+had seen this bird, but they had seen and
+somewhat irreverently used for making parts<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+of their fishing tackle, bones of its extinct relatives,
+and these bones they declared to be as
+large as those of an ox.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time another missionary,
+the Rev. Richard Taylor, found a bone ascribed
+to the Moa, and met with a very similar tradition
+among the natives of a near-by district,
+only, as the foot of the rainbow moves away
+as we move toward it, in his case the bird was
+said to dwell in quite a different locality from
+that given by the natives of East Cape. While,
+however, the Maoris were certain that the
+Moa still lived, and to doubt its existence was
+little short of a crime, no one had actually seen
+it, and as time went on and the bird still remained
+unseen by any explorer, hope became
+doubt and doubt certainty, until it even became
+a mooted question whether such a bird
+had existed within the past ten centuries, to
+say nothing of having lived within the memory
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>But if we do not know the living birds, their
+remains are scattered broadcast over hillside
+and plain, concealed in caves, buried in the
+mud of swamps, and from these we gain a good
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+idea of their size and structure, while chance
+has even made it possible to know something
+of their color and general appearance. This
+chance was the discovery of a few specimens,
+preserved in exceptionally dry caves on the
+South Island, which not only had some of the
+bones still united by ligaments, but patches of
+skin clinging to the bones, and bearing numerous
+feathers of a chestnut color tipped with
+white. These small, straggling, rusty feathers
+are not much to look at, but when we reflect
+that they have been preserved for centuries
+without any care whatever, while the buffalo
+bugs have devoured our best Smyrna rugs in
+spite of all possible precautions, our respect for
+them increases.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_188.jpg" width="400" height="221"  alt="" />
+Fig. 28.&mdash;Relics of the Moa.
+</div>
+
+<p>From the bones we learn that there were a
+great many kinds of Moas, twenty at least,
+ranging in size from those little larger than a
+turkey to that giant among giants, <i>Dinornis
+maximus</i>, which stood at least ten feet high,<a id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+or two feet higher than the largest ostrich, and
+may well claim the distinction of being the
+tallest of all known birds. We also learn from
+the bones that not only were the Moas flightless,
+but that many of them were absolutely
+wingless, being devoid even of such vestiges of
+wings as we find in the Cassowary or Apteryx.
+But if Nature deprived these birds of wings,
+she made ample amends in the matter of legs,
+those of some species, the Elephant-footed
+Moa, <i>Pachyornis elephantopus</i>, for example,
+being so massively built as to cause one to
+wonder what the owner used them for, although
+the generally accepted theory is that
+they were used for scratching up the roots of
+ferns on which the Moas are believed to have
+fed. And if a blow from an irate ostrich is
+sufficient to fell a man, what must have been
+the kicking power of an able-bodied Moa?
+Beside this bird the ostrich would appear as
+slim and graceful as a gazelle beside a prize ox.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>The height of the Moas, and even of some species of
+&AElig;pyornis, is often stated to be twelve or fourteen feet, but such
+a height can only be obtained by placing the skeleton in a wholly
+unnatural attitude.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The Moas were confined to New Zealand,
+some species inhabiting the North Island, some
+the South, very few being common to both,
+and from these peculiarities of distribution<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+geologists deduce that at some early period in
+the history of the earth the two islands formed
+one, that later on the land subsided, leaving
+the islands separated by a strait, and that since
+this subsidence there has been sufficient time
+for the development of the species peculiar to
+each island. Although Moas were still numerous
+when man made his appearance in this
+part of the world, the large deposits of their
+bones indicate that they were on the wane, and
+that natural causes had already reduced the
+feathered population of these islands. A glacial
+period is believed to have wrought their
+destruction, and in one great morass, abounding
+in springs, their bones occur in such enormous
+numbers, layer upon layer, that it is
+thought the birds sought the place where the
+flowing springs might afford their feet at least
+some respite from the biting cold, and there
+perished miserably by thousands.</p>
+
+<p>What Nature spared man finished, and
+legends of Moa hunts and Moa feasts still lingered
+among the Maoris when the white man
+came and began in turn the extermination of
+the Maori. The theory has been advanced,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+with much to support it, that the big birds
+were eaten off the face of the earth by an earlier
+race than the Maoris, and that after the
+extirpation of the Moas the craving for flesh
+naturally led to cannibalism. But by whomsoever
+the destruction was wrought, the result
+was the same, the habitat of these feathered
+giants knew them no longer, while multitudes
+of charred bones, interspersed with fragments
+of egg-shells, bear testimony to former barbaric
+feasts.</p>
+
+<p>It is a far cry from New Zealand to Madagascar,
+but thither must we go, for that island
+was, pity we cannot say is, inhabited by a
+race of giant birds from whose eggs it has been
+thought may have been hatched the Roc of
+Sindbad. Arabian tales, as we all know, locate
+the Roc either in Madagascar or in some
+adjacent island to the north and east, and it is
+far from unlikely that legends of the &AElig;pyornis,
+backed by the substantial proof of its
+enormous eggs, may have been the slight
+foundation of fact whereon the story-teller
+erected his structure of fiction. True, the Roc
+of fable was a gigantic bird of prey capable of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+bearing away an elephant in its talons, while
+the &AElig;pyornis has shed its wings and shrunk
+to dimensions little larger than an ostrich, but
+this is the inevitable result of closer acquaintance
+and the application of a two-foot rule.</p>
+
+<p>Like the Moa the &AElig;pyornis seems to have
+lived in tradition long after it became extinct,
+for a French history of Madagascar, published
+as early as 1658 makes mention of a large bird,
+or kind of ostrich, said to inhabit the southern
+end of the island. Still, in spite of bones having
+been found that bear evident traces of the
+handiwork of man, it is possible that this and
+other reports were due to the obvious necessity
+of having some bird to account for the presence
+of the eggs.</p>
+
+<p>The actual introduction of the &AElig;pyornis to
+science took place in 1834, when a French
+traveller sent Jules Verreaux, the ornithologist,
+a sketch of a huge egg, saying that he had
+seen two of that size, one sawed in twain to
+make bowls, the other, traversed by a stick,
+serving in the preparation of rice uses somewhat
+in contrast with the proverbial fragility
+of egg-shells. A little later another traveller<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+procured some fragments of egg-shells, but it
+was not until 1851 that any entire eggs were
+obtained, when two were secured, and with a
+few bones sent to France, where Geoffroy St.
+Hilaire bestowed upon them the name of
+<i>&AElig;pyornis maximus</i> (the greatest lofty bird).
+Maximus the eggs remain, for they still hold
+the record for size; but so far as the bird that
+is supposed to have laid them is concerned, the
+name was a little premature, for other and
+larger species subsequently came to hand.
+Between the &AElig;pyornithes and the Moas Science
+has had a hard time, for the supply of big
+words was not large enough to go around, and
+some had to do duty twice. In the way of
+generic names we have Dinornis, terrible bird;
+&AElig;pyornis, high bird; Pachyornis, stout bird;
+and Brontornis, thunder bird, while for specific
+names there are robustus, maximus, titan;
+gravis, heavy; immanis, enormous; crassus,
+stout; ingens, great; and elephantopus, elephant-footed&mdash;truly
+a goodly array of large-sounding
+words. But to return to the big
+eggs! Usually we look upon those of the ostrich
+as pretty large, but an ostrich egg measures<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+4-1/2 by 6 inches, while that of the &AElig;pyornis
+is 9 by 13 inches; or, to put it another
+way, it would hold the contents of six ostrichs'
+eggs, or one hundred and forty-eight hens' eggs,
+or thirty thousand humming birds' eggs; and
+while this is very much smaller than a waterbutt,
+it is still as large as a bucket, and one or
+two such eggs might suffice to make an omelet
+for Gargantua himself.</p>
+
+<p>The size of an egg is no safe criterion of the
+size of the bird that laid it, for a large bird
+may lay a small egg, or a small bird a large
+one. Comparing the egg of the great Moa
+with that of our &AElig;pyornis one might think
+the latter much the larger bird, say twelve feet
+in height, when the facts in the case are that
+while there was no great difference in the
+weight of the two, that difference, and a superiority
+of at least two feet in height, are in
+favor of the bird that laid the smaller egg.
+The record of large eggs, however, belongs to
+the Apteryx, a New Zealand bird smaller
+than a hen, though distantly related to the
+Moas, which lays an egg about one-third of
+its own weight, measuring 3 by 5 inches; perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+it is not to be wondered at that the bird
+lays but two.</p>
+
+<p>Although most of the eggs of these big
+birds that have been found have literally been
+unearthed from the muck of swamps, now and
+then one comes to light in a more interesting
+manner as, for example, when a perfect egg of
+&AElig;pyornis was found afloat after a hurricane,
+bobbing serenely up and down with the waves
+near St. Augustine's Bay, or when an egg of
+the Moa was exhumed from an ancient Maori
+grave, where for years it had lain unharmed,
+safely clasped between the skeleton fingers of
+the occupant. So far very few of these huge
+eggs have made their way to this country, and
+the only egg of &AElig;pyornis now on this side of
+the water is the property of a private individual.</p>
+
+<p>Most recent in point of discovery, but oldest
+in point of time, are the giant birds from Patagonia,
+which are burdened with the name of
+Phororhacid&aelig;, a name that originated in an
+error, although the error may well be excused.
+The first fragment of one of these great birds
+to come to light was a portion of the lower
+jaw, and this was so massive, so un-bird-like,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+that the finder dubbed it <i>Phororhacos</i>, and so
+it must remain.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_198.jpg" width="400" height="231"  alt="" />
+Fig. 29.&mdash;Eggs of Feathered Giants, &AElig;pyornis, Ostrich, Moa, Compared
+with a Hen&#39;s Egg.
+</div>
+
+<p>It is a pity that all the large names were
+used up before this group of birds was discovered,
+and it is particularly unfortunate that
+Dinornis, terrible bird, was applied to the root-eating
+Moas, for these Patagonian birds, with
+their massive limbs, huge heads and hooked
+beaks, were truly worthy of such a name; and
+although in nowise related to the eagles, they
+may in habit have been terrestrial birds of prey.
+Not all the members of this family are giants,
+for as in other groups, some are big and some
+little, but the largest among them might be
+styled the Daniel Lambert of the feathered
+race. <i>Brontornis</i>, for example, the thunder
+bird, or as the irreverent translate it, the thundering
+big bird, had leg-bones larger than those
+of an ox, the drumstick measuring 30 inches in
+length by 2-1/2 inches in diameter, or 4-1/4 inches
+across the ends, while the tarsus, or lower bone
+of the leg to which the toes are attached, was
+16-1/2 inches long and 5-1/2 inches wide where the
+toes join on. Bear this in mind the next time
+you see a large turkey, or compare these bones
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+with those of an ostrich: but lest you may forget,
+it may be said that the same bone of a
+fourteen-pound turkey is 5-1/2 inches long, and
+one inch wide at either end, while that of an
+ostrich measures 19 inches long and 2 inches
+across the toes, or 3 at the upper end.</p>
+
+<p>If Brontornis was a heavy-limbed bird, he
+was not without near rivals among the Moas,
+while the great Phororhacos, one of his contemporaries,
+was not only nearly as large, but
+quite unique in build. Imagine a bird seven
+or eight feet in height from the sole of his big,
+sharp-clawed feet, to the top of his huge head,
+poise this head on a neck as thick as that of a
+horse, arm it with a beak as sharp as an icepick
+and almost as formidable, and you have a
+fair idea of this feathered giant of the ancient
+pampas. The head indeed was truly colossal
+for that of a bird, measuring 23 inches in
+length by 7 in depth, while that of the racehorse
+Lexington, and he was a good-sized
+horse, measures 22 inches long by 5-1/2 inches
+deep. The depth of the jaw is omitted because
+we wish to make as good a case as possible
+for the bird, and the jaw of a horse is so<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+deep as to give him an undue advantage in that
+respect.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_202.jpg" width="400" height="266"  alt="" />
+Fig. 30.&mdash;Skull of Phororhacos Compared with that of
+the Race-horse Lexington.
+</div>
+
+<p>We can only speculate on the food of these
+great birds, and for aught we know to the
+contrary they may have caught fish, fed upon
+carrion, or used their powerful feet and huge
+beaks for grubbing roots; but if they were not
+more or less carnivorous, preying upon such
+reptiles, mammals and other birds as came
+within reach, then nature apparently made a
+mistake in giving them such a formidable
+equipment of beak and claw. So far as habits<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+go we might be
+justified in calling
+them cursorial
+birds of prey.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter300">
+<img src="images/i_203.jpg" width="300" height="652"  alt="" />
+Fig. 31.&mdash;Leg of a Horse Compared
+with that of the Giant Moa.
+</div>
+
+<p>We really know
+very little about
+these Patagonian
+giants, but they
+are interesting not
+only from their
+great size and astounding
+skulls,
+but because of the
+early age (Miocene)
+at which
+they lived and because
+in spite of
+their bulk they are
+in nowise related
+to the ostriches,
+but belong near
+the heron family.
+As usual, we have
+no idea why they
+became extinct,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+but in this instance man is guiltless, for they
+lived and died long before he made his appearance,
+and the ever-convenient hypothesis
+"change of climate" may be responsible for
+their disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>Something, perhaps, remains to be said concerning
+the causes which seem to have led to
+the development of these giant birds, as well
+as the reasons for their flightless condition and
+peculiar distribution, for it will be noticed
+that, with the exception of the African and
+South American ostriches the great flightless
+birds as a rule are, and were, confined to uninhabited
+or sparsely populated islands, and this
+is equally true of the many small, but equally
+flightless birds. It is a seemingly harsh law
+of nature that all living beings shall live in a
+more or less active struggle with each other
+and with their surroundings, and that those
+creatures which possess some slight advantage
+over their fellows in the matter of speed, or
+strength, or ability to adapt themselves to surrounding
+conditions, shall prosper at the expense
+of the others. In the power of flight,
+birds have a great safeguard against changes of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+climate with their accompanying variations in
+the supply of food, and, to a lesser extent,
+against their various enemies, including man.
+This power of flight, acquired early in their
+geological history, has enabled birds to spread
+over the length and breadth of the globe as no
+other group of animals has done, and to thrive
+under the most varying conditions, and it
+would seem that if this power were lost it
+must sooner or later work harm. Now to-day
+we find no great wingless birds in thickly
+populated regions, or where beasts of prey
+abound; the ostriches roam the desert wastes
+of Arabia, Africa and South America where
+men are few and savage beasts scarce, and
+against these is placed a fleetness of foot inherited
+from ancestors who acquired it before
+man was. The heavy cassowaries dwell in the
+thinly inhabited, thickly wooded islands of
+Malaysia, where again there are no large carnivores
+and where the dense vegetation is some
+safeguard against man; the emu comes from
+the Australian plains, where also there are no
+four-footed enemies<a id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> and where his ancestors
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>dwelt in peace before the advent of man.
+And the same things are true of the Moas, the
+&AElig;pyornithes, the flightless birds of Patagonia,
+the recent dodo of Mauritius and the solitaire
+of Rodriguez, each and all of which flourished
+in places where there were no men and practically
+no other enemies. Hence we deduce
+that absence of enemies is the prime factor in
+the existence of flightless birds,<a id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> although
+presence of food is an essential, while isolation,
+or restriction to a limited area, plays an important
+part by keeping together those birds,
+or that race of birds, whose members show a
+tendency to disuse their wings. It will be
+seen that such combinations of circumstances
+will most naturally be found on islands whose
+geological history is such that they have had
+no connection with adjacent continents, or
+such a very ancient connection that they were
+not then peopled with beasts of prey, while
+subsequently their distance from other countries
+has prevented them from receiving such
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>population by accident in recent times and has
+also retarded the arrival of man.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>The dingo, or native dog, is not forgotten, but, like man,
+it is a comparatively recent animal.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Note that in Tasmania, which is very near Australia, both
+in space and in the character of its animals, there are two carnivorous
+mammals, the Tasmanian "Wolf" and the Tasmanian
+Devil, and no flightless birds.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Once established, flightlessness and size play
+into one another's hands; the flightless bird
+has no limit placed on its size<a id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> while granted
+a food supply and immunity from man; the
+larger the bird the less the necessity for wings
+to escape from four-footed foes. So long as
+the climate was favorable and man absent, the
+big, clumsy bird might thrive, but upon the
+coming of man, or in the face of any unfavorable
+change of climate, he would be at a serious
+disadvantage and hence whenever either
+of these two factors has been brought to bear
+against them the feathered giants have vanished.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>While we do not know the limit of size to a flying creature,
+none has as yet been found whose wings would spread over
+twenty feet from tip to tip, and it is evident that wings larger
+than this would demand great strength for their manipulation.</i></p></div>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>There is a fine collection of mounted skeletons of various
+species of Moas in the Museum of Comparative
+Zoology at Cambridge, Mass., and another in the American
+Museum of Natural History, New York. A few</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+<i>other skeletons and numerous bones are to be found in
+other institutions, but the author is not aware of any egg
+being in this country. Specimens of the &AElig;pyornis are
+rare in this country, but Mr. Robert Gilfort, of Orange,
+N.J., is the possessor of a very fine egg. A number of
+eggs have been sold in London, the prices ranging from
+&pound;200 down to &pound;42, this last being much less than prices
+paid for eggs of the great auk. But then, the great
+auk is somewhat of a fad, and there are just enough
+eggs in existence to bring one into the market every
+little while. Besides, the number of eggs of the great
+auk is a fixed quantity, while no one knows how many
+more of &AElig;pyornis remain to be discovered in the swamps
+of Madagascar. No specimens of the gigantic Patagonian
+birds are now in this country, but a fine example
+of one of the smaller forms, Pelycornis, including
+the only breast-bone yet found, is in the Museum of
+Princeton University.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The largest known tibia of a Moa, the longest bird-bone
+known, is in the collection of the Canterbury Museum,
+Christchurch, New Zealand; it is 3 feet 3 inches
+long. This, however, is exceptional, the measurements
+of the leg-bones of an ordinary Dinornis maximus
+being as follows: Femur, 18 inches; tibia, 32 inches;
+tarsus, 19 inches, a total of 5 feet 9 inches. The egg
+measures 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There is plenty of literature, and very interesting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+literature, about the Moas, but, unfortunately, the best
+of it is not always accessible, being contained in the
+"New Zealand Journal of Science" and the "Transactions
+of the New Zealand Institute." The volume of
+"Transactions" for 1893, being vol. xxvi., contains a
+very full list of articles relating to the Moas, compiled
+by Mr. A. Hamilton; it will be found to commence on
+page 229. There is a good article on Moa in Newton's
+"Dictionary of Birds," a book that should be in every
+library.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_209.jpg" width="400" height="304"  alt="" />
+Fig. 32.&mdash;The Three Giants, Phororhacos, Moa, Ostrich.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">THE ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE</p>
+
+<div class="inset16">
+<p>
+"<i>Said the little Eohippus</i><br />
+<span class="in1"><i>I am going to be a horse</i></span><br />
+<i>And on my middle finger-nails</i><br />
+<span class="in1"><i>To run my earthly course."</i></span><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The American whose ancestors came over in
+the "Mayflower" has a proper pride in the
+length of the line of his descent. The Englishman
+whose genealogical tree sprang up at the
+time of William the Conqueror has, in its eight
+centuries of growth, still larger occasion for
+pluming himself on the antiquity of his family.
+But the pedigree of even the latter is a thing
+of yesterday when compared with that of the
+horse, whose family records, according to Professor
+Osborn, reach backward for something
+like 2,000,000 years. And if, as we have been
+told, "it is a good thing to have ancestors, but
+sometimes a little hard on the ancestor," in this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+instance at least the founders of the family
+have every reason to regard their descendants
+with undisguised pride. For the horse family
+started in life in a small way, and the first of
+the line, the Hyracotherium, was "a little animal
+no bigger than a fox, and on five<a id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> toes
+he scampered over Tertiary rocks," in the age
+called Eocene, because it was the morning of
+life for the great group of mammals whose culminating
+point was man. At that time, western
+North America was a country of many
+lakes, for the most part comparatively shallow,
+around the reedy margins of which moved a
+host of animals, quite unlike those of to-day,
+and yet foreshadowing them, the forerunners
+of the rhinoceros, tapir, and the horse.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Four, to be exact; but we prefer to sacrifice the foot of
+the Hyracothere rather than to take liberties with one of the
+feet of Mrs. Stetson's poem.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The early horse&mdash;we may call him so by
+courtesy, although he was then very far from
+being a true horse&mdash;was an insignificant little
+creature, apparently far less likely to succeed
+in life's race than his bulky competitors, and
+yet, by making the most of their opportunities,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>his descendants have survived, while most of
+theirs have dropped by the wayside; and
+finally, by the aid of man, the horse has become
+spread over the length and breadth of
+the habitable globe.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_212.jpg" width="400" height="324"  alt="" />
+Fig. 33.&mdash;Skeleton of the Modern Horse and of His
+Eocene Ancestor.
+</div>
+
+<p>Now right here it may be asked, How do
+we know that the little Hyracothere <i>was</i> the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+progenitor of the horse, and how can it be
+shown that there is any bond of kinship between
+him and, for example, the great French
+Percheron? There is only one way in which
+we can obtain this knowledge, and but one
+method by which the relationship can be
+shown, and that is by collecting the fossil remains
+of animals long extinct and comparing
+them with the bones of the recent horse, a
+branch of science known as Pal&aelig;ontology. It
+has taken a very long time to gather the necessary
+evidence, and it has taken a vast amount
+of hard work in our western Territories, for
+"the country that is as hot as Hades, watered
+by stagnant alkali pools, is almost invariably
+the richest in fossils." Likewise it has called
+for the expenditure of much time and more patience
+to put together some of this petrified
+evidence, fragmentary in every sense of the
+word, and get it into such shape that it could
+be handled by the anatomist. Still, the work
+has been done, and, link by link, the chain has
+been constructed that unites the horse of to-day
+with the horse of very many yesterdays.</p>
+
+<p>The very first links in this chain are the remains<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+of the bronze age and those found among
+the ruins of the ancient Swiss lake dwellings;
+but earlier still than these are the bones
+of horses found abundantly in northern Europe,
+Asia, and America. The individual bones and
+teeth of some of these horses are scarcely distinguishable
+from those of to-day, a fact noted
+in the name, <i>Equus fraternus</i>, applied to one
+species; and when teeth alone are found, it is
+at times practically impossible to say whether
+they belong to a fossil horse or to a modern
+animal. But when enough scattered bones are
+gathered to make a fairly complete skeleton, it
+becomes evident that the fossil horse had a proportionately
+larger head and smaller feet than
+his existing relative, and that he was a little
+more like an ass or zebra, for the latter, spite
+of his gay coat, is a near relative of the lowly
+ass. Moreover, primitive man made sketches
+of the primitive horse, just as he did of the
+mammoth, and these indicate that the horse of
+those days was something like an overgrown
+Shetland pony, low and heavily built, large-headed
+and rough-coated. For the old cave-dwellers
+of Europe were intimately acquainted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+with the prehistoric horses, using them for
+food, as they did almost every animal that fell
+beneath their flint arrows and stone axes. And
+if one may judge from the abundance of bones,
+the horses must have roamed about in bands,
+just as the horses escaped from civilization
+roam, or have roamed, over the pampas of
+South America and the prairies of the West.</p>
+
+<p>The horse was just as abundant in North
+America in Pleistocene time as in Europe;
+but there is no evidence to show that it was
+contemporary with early man in North America,
+and, even were this the case, it is generally
+believed that long before the discovery of
+America the horse had disappeared. And yet,
+so plentiful and so fresh are his remains, and
+so much like those of the mustang, that the
+late Professor Cope was wont to say that it
+almost seemed as if the horse <i>might</i> have
+lingered in Texas until the coming of the white
+man. And Sir William Flower wrote: "There
+is a possibility of the animal having still existed,
+in a wild state, in some parts of the continent
+remote from that which was first visited
+by the Spaniards, where they were certainly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+unknown. It has been suggested that the
+horses which were found by Cabot in La Plata
+in 1530 cannot have been introduced."</p>
+
+<p>Still we have not the least little bit of positive
+proof that such was the case, and although
+the site of many an ancient Indian village has
+been carefully explored, no bones of the horse
+have come to light, or if they have been found,
+bones of the ox or sheep were also present to
+tell that the village was occupied long after
+the advent of the whites. It is also a curious
+fact that within historic times there have been
+no wild horses, in the true sense of the word,
+unless indeed those found on the steppes north
+of the Sea of Azof be wild, and this is very
+doubtful. But long before the dawn of history
+the horse was domesticated in Europe, and
+C&aelig;sar found the Germans, and even the old
+Britons, using war chariots drawn by horses&mdash;for
+the first use man seems to have made of
+the horse was to aid him in killing off his fellow-man,
+and not until comparatively modern
+times was the animal employed in the peaceful
+arts of agriculture. The immediate predecessors
+of these horses were considerably<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+smaller, being about the size and build of a
+pony, but they were very much like a horse in
+structure, save that the teeth were shorter.
+As they lived during Pliocene times, they have
+been named "Pliohippus."</p>
+
+<p>Going back into the past a step farther,
+though a pretty long step if we reckon by
+years, we come upon a number of animals very
+much like horses, save for certain cranial peculiarities
+and the fact that they had three
+toes on each foot, while the horse, as every one
+knows, has but one toe. Now, if we glance at
+the skeleton of a horse, we will see on either
+side of the canon-bone, in the same situation
+as the upper part of the little toes of the Hippotherium,
+as these three-toed horses are called,
+a long slender bone, termed by veterinarians
+the splint bone; and it requires no anatomical
+training to see that the bones in the two animals
+are the same. The horse lacks the lower
+part of his side toes, that is all, just as man
+will very probably some day lack the last bones
+of his little toe. We find an approach to this
+condition in some of the Hippotheres even,
+known as Protohippus, in which the side toes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+are quite small, foreshadowing the time when
+they shall have disappeared entirely. It may
+also be noted here that the splint bones of the
+horses of the bronze age are a little longer than
+those of existing horses, and that they are
+never united with the large central toe, while
+nowadays there is something of a tendency for
+the three bones to fuse into one, although part
+of this tendency the writer believes to be due
+to inflammation set up by the strain of the
+pulling and hauling the animal is now called
+upon to do. Some of these three-toed Hippotheres
+are not in the direct line of ancestry of
+the horse, but are side branches on the family
+tree, having become so highly specialized in
+certain directions that no further progress
+horseward was possible.</p>
+
+<p>Backward still, and the bones we find in the
+Miocene strata of the West, belonging to those
+ancestors of the horse to which the name of
+Mesohippus has been given because they are
+midway in time and structure between the
+horse of the past and present, tell us that
+then all horses were small and that all had
+three toes on a foot, while the fore feet bore<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+even the suggestion of a fourth toe. From
+this to our Eocene Hyracothere with four toes
+is only another long-time step. We may go
+even beyond this in time and structure, and
+carry back the line of the horse to animals
+which only remotely resembled him and had
+five good toes to a foot; but while these contained
+the possibility of a horse, they made no
+show of it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter800">
+<img src="images/i_219.jpg" width="800" height="333"  alt="" />
+Fig. 34.&mdash;The Development of the Horse.
+</div>
+
+<p>Increase in size and decrease in number of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+the toes were not the only changes that were
+required to transform the progeny of the Hyracothere
+into a horse. These are the most
+evident; but the increased complexity in the
+structure of the teeth was quite as important.
+The teeth of gnawing animals have often been
+compared to a chisel which is made of a steel
+plate with soft iron backing, and the teeth of
+a horse, or of other grass-eating animals, are
+simply an elaboration of this idea. The hard<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+enamel, which represents the steel, is set in
+soft dentine, which represents the iron, and in
+use the dentine wears away the faster of the
+two, so that the enamel stands up in ridges,
+each tooth becoming, as it is correctly termed,
+"a grinder." In a horse the plates of enamel
+form curved, complex, irregular patterns; but
+as we go back in time, the patterns become
+less and less elaborate, until in the Hyracothere,
+standing at the foot of the family tree,
+the teeth are very simple in structure. Moreover,
+his teeth were of limited growth, while
+those of the horse grow for a considerable
+time, thus compensating for the wear to which
+they are subjected.</p>
+
+<p>We have, then, this direct evidence as to
+the genealogy of the horse, that between the
+little Eocene Hyracothere and the modern
+horse we can place a series of animals by
+which we can pass by gradual stages from one
+to the other, and that as we come upward
+there is an increase in stature, in the complexity
+of the teeth, and in the size of the
+brain. At the same time, the number of toes
+decreases, which tells that the animals were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+developing more and more speed; for it is a
+rule that the fewer the toes the faster the animal:
+the fastest of birds, the ostrich, has but
+two toes, and one of these is mostly ornamental;
+and the fastest of mammals, the horse,
+has but one.</p>
+
+<p>All breeders of fancy stock, particularly of
+pigeons and poultry, recognize the tendency
+of animals to revert to the forms whence they
+were derived and reproduce some character of
+a distant ancestor; to "throw back," as the
+breeders term it. If now, instead of reproducing
+a trait or feature possessed by some
+ancestor a score, a hundred, or perhaps a thousand
+years ago, there should reappear a characteristic
+of some ancestor that flourished
+100,000 years back, we should have a seeming
+abnormality, but really a case of reversion;
+and the more we become acquainted with the
+structure of extinct animals and the development
+of those now living, the better able are
+we to explain these apparent abnormalities.</p>
+
+<p>Bearing in mind that the two splint bones
+of the horse correspond to the upper portions
+of the side toes of the Hippotherium and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+Mesohippus, it is easy to see that if for any
+reason these should develop into toes, they
+would make the foot of a modern horse appear
+like that of his distant ancestor. While such
+a thing rarely happens, yet now and then nature
+apparently does attempt to reproduce a
+horse's foot after the ancient pattern, for occasionally
+we meet with a horse having, instead
+of the single toe with which the average horse
+is satisfied, one or possibly two extra toes.
+Sometimes the toe is extra in every sense of
+the word, being a mere duplication of the central
+toe; but sometimes it is an actual development
+of one of the splint bones. No less a
+personage than Julius C&aelig;sar possessed one of
+these polydactyl horses, and the reporters of
+the <i>Daily Roman</i> and the <i>Tiberian Gazette</i>
+doubtless wrote it up in good journalistic
+Latin, for we find the horse described as having
+feet that were almost human, and as being
+looked upon with great awe. While this is
+the most celebrated of extra-toed horses, other
+and more plebeian individuals have been much
+more widely known through having been exhibited
+throughout the country under such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+titles as "Clique, the horse with six feet,"
+"the eight-footed Cuban horse," and so on;
+and possibly some of these are familiar to
+readers of this page.</p>
+
+<p>So the collateral evidence, though scanty,
+bears out the circumstantial proof, derived
+from fossil bones, that the horse has developed
+from a many-toed ancestor; and the evidence
+points toward the little Hyracothere as being
+that ancestor. It remains only to show some
+good reason why this development should
+have taken place, or to indicate the forces by
+which it was brought about. We have heard
+much about "the survival of the fittest," a
+phrase which simply means that those animals
+best adapted to their surroundings will survive,
+while those ill adapted will perish. But
+it should be added that it means also that the
+animals must be able to adapt themselves to
+changes in their environment, or to change
+with it. Living beings cannot stand still indefinitely;
+they must progress or perish. And
+this seems to have been the cause for the extinction
+of the huge quadrupeds that flourished
+at the time of the three-toed Miocene<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+horse. They were adapted to their environment
+as it was; but when the western mountains
+were thrust upward, cutting off the
+moist winds from the Pacific, making great
+changes in the rainfall and climate to the eastward
+of the Rocky Mountains, these big
+beasts, slow of foot and dull of brain, could
+not keep pace with the change, and their race
+vanished from the face of the earth. The day
+of the little Hyracothere was at the beginning
+of the great series of changes by which the
+lake country of the West, with its marshy
+flats and rank vegetation, became transformed
+into dry uplands sparsely clad with fine
+grasses. On these dry plains the more nimble-footed
+animals would have the advantage in
+the struggle for existence; and while the four-toed
+foot would keep its owner from sinking
+in soft ground, he was handicapped when it
+became a question of speed, for not only is a
+fleet animal better able to flee from danger
+than his slower fellows, but in time of drouth
+he can cover the greater extent of territory
+in search of food or water. So, too, as the
+rank rushes gave place to fine grasses, often<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+browned and withered beneath the summer's
+sun, the complex tooth had an advantage over
+that of simpler structure, while the cutting-teeth,
+so completely developed in the horse
+family, enabled their possessors to crop the
+grass as closely as one could do it with scissors.
+Likewise, up to a certain point, the
+largest, most powerful animal will not only
+conquer, or escape from, his enemies, but prevail
+over rivals of his own kind as well, and
+thus it came to pass that those early members
+of the horse family who were pre&euml;minent in
+speed and stature, and harmonized best with
+their surroundings, outstripped their fellows
+and transmitted these qualities to their progeny,
+until, as a result of long ages of natural
+selection, there was developed the modern
+horse. The rest man has done: the heavy,
+slow-paced dray horse, the fleet trotter, the
+huge Percheron, and the diminutive pony are
+one and all the recent products of artificial
+selection.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>The best collection of fossil horses, and one specially
+arranged to illustrate the line of descent of the modern
+horse, is to be found in the American Museum of Natural
+History, New York, but some good specimens, of particular
+interest because they were described by Professor
+Marsh and studied by Huxley are in the Yale University
+Museum. They are referred to in Huxley's "American
+Addresses; Lectures on Evolution." "The
+Horse," by Sir W. H. Flower, discusses the horse in a
+popular manner from various points of view and contains
+numerous references to books and articles on the subject
+from which anyone wishing for further information could
+obtain it.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_228.jpg" width="400" height="260"  alt="" />
+Fig. 35.&mdash;The Mammoth.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by Charles R. Knight.</i>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">THE MAMMOTH</p>
+
+<div class="inset22">
+<p>"<i>His legs were as thick as the bole of the beech,</i><br />
+<span class="in1"><i>His tusks as the buttonwood white,</i></span><br />
+<i>While his lithe trunk wound like a sapling around</i><br />
+<span class="in1"><i>An oak in the whirlwind's might."</i></span><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>In the October number of McClure's Magazine for 1899
+was published a short story, "The Killing of the Mammoth,"
+by "H. Tukeman," which, to the amazement of the editors, was
+taken by many readers not as fiction, but as a contribution to
+natural history. Immediately after the appearance of that
+number of the magazine, the authorities of the Smithsonian Institution,
+in which the author had located the remains of the
+beast of his fancy, were beset with visitors to see the stuffed
+mammoth, and the daily mail of the Magazine, as well as that
+of the Smithsonian Institution, was filled with inquiries for
+more information and for requests to settle wagers as to whether
+it was a true story or not. The contribution in question was
+printed purely as fiction, with no idea of misleading the public,
+and was entitled a story in the table of contents. We doubt if
+any writer of realistic fiction ever had a more general and convincing
+proof of success.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>About three centuries ago, in 1696, a Russian,
+one Ludloff by name, described some bones
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+belonging to what the Tartars called "Mamantu";
+later on, Blumenbach pressed the common
+name into scientific use as "Mammut,"
+and Cuvier gallicized this into "Mammouth,"
+whence by an easy transition we get our familiar
+mammoth. We are so accustomed to
+use the word to describe anything of remarkable
+size that it would be only natural to suppose
+that the name Mammoth was given to
+the extinct elephant because of its extraordinary
+bulk. Exactly the reverse of this is true,
+however, for the word came to have its present
+meaning because the original possessor of the
+name was a huge animal. The Siberian peasants
+called the creature "Mamantu," or
+"ground-dweller," because they believed it to
+be a gigantic mole, passing its life beneath the
+ground and perishing when by any accident it
+saw the light. The reasoning that led to this
+belief was very simple and the logic very good;
+no one had ever seen a live Mamantu, but
+there were plenty of its bones lying at or near
+the surface; consequently if the animal did not
+live above the ground, it must dwell below.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, nearly every one knows that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+mammoth was a sort of big, hairy elephant,
+now extinct, and nearly every one has a general
+idea that it lived in the North. There is
+some uncertainty as to whether the mammoth
+was a mastodon, or the mastodon a mammoth,
+and there is a great deal of misconception as
+to the size and abundance of this big beast. It
+may be said in passing that the mastodon is
+only a second or third cousin of the mammoth,
+but that the existing elephant of Asia is a very
+near relative, certainly as near as a first cousin,
+possibly a very great grandson. Popularly, the
+mammoth is supposed to have been a colossus
+somewhere from twelve to twenty feet in
+height, beside whom modern elephants would
+seem insignificant; but as "trout lose much in
+dressing," so mammoths shrink in measuring,
+and while there were doubtless Jumbos among
+them in the way of individuals of exceptional
+magnitude, the majority were decidedly under
+Jumbo's size. The only mounted mammoth
+skeleton in this country, that in the Chicago
+Academy of Sciences, is one of the largest, the
+thigh-bone measuring five feet one inch in
+length, or a foot more than that of Jumbo;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+and as Jumbo stood eleven feet high, the rule
+of three applied to this thigh-bone would give
+the living animal a height of thirteen feet
+eight inches. The height of this specimen is
+given as thirteen feet in its bones, with an estimate
+of fourteen feet in its clothes; but as the
+skeleton is obviously mounted altogether too
+high, it is pretty safe to say that thirteen feet
+is a good, fair allowance for the height of this
+animal when alive. As for the majority of
+mammoths, they would not average more than
+nine or ten feet high. Sir Samuel Baker tells
+us that he has seen plenty of wild African elephants
+that would exceed Jumbo by a foot or
+more, and while this must be accepted with
+caution, since unfortunately he neglected to
+put a tape-line on them, yet Mr. Thomas
+Baines did measure a specimen twelve feet
+high. This, coupled with Sir Samuel's statement,
+indicates that there is not so much difference
+between the mammoth and the elephant
+as there might be. This applies to the
+mammoth <i>par excellence</i>, the species known
+scientifically as <i>Elephas primigenius</i>, whose
+remains are found in many parts of the Northern<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+Hemisphere and occur abundantly in Siberia
+and Alaska. There were other elephants
+than the mammoth, and some that exceeded
+him in size, notably <i>Elephas meridionalis</i> of
+southern Europe, and <i>Elephas columbi</i> of our
+Southern and Western States, but even the
+largest cannot positively be asserted to have
+exceeded a height of thirteen feet. Tusks
+offer convenient terms of comparison, and
+those of an average fully grown mammoth
+are from eight to ten feet in length; those of
+the famous St. Petersburg specimen and those
+of the huge specimen in Chicago measuring
+respectively nine feet three inches, and nine
+feet eight inches. So far as the writer is
+aware, the largest tusks actually measured are
+two from Alaska, one twelve feet ten inches
+long, weighing 190 pounds, reported by Mr.
+Jay Beach; and another eleven feet long,
+weighing 200 pounds, noted by Mr. T. L.
+Brevig. Compared with these we have the
+big tusk that used to stand on Fulton Street,
+New York, just an inch under nine feet long,
+and weighing 184 pounds, or the largest shown
+at Chicago in 1893, which was seven feet six<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+inches long, and weighed 176 pounds. The
+largest, most beautiful tusks, probably, ever
+seen in this country were a pair brought from
+Zanzibar and displayed by Messrs. Tiffany &amp;
+Company in 1900. The measurements and
+weights of these were as follows: length along
+outer curve, ten feet and three-fourths of an
+inch, circumference one foot, eleven inches,
+weight, 224 pounds; length along outer curve,
+ten feet, three and one-half inches, circumference
+two feet and one-fourth of an inch, weight,
+239 pounds.</p>
+
+<p>For our knowledge of the external appearance
+of the mammoth we are indebted to the
+more or less entire examples which have been
+found at various times in Siberia, but mainly
+to the noted specimen found in 1799 near the
+Lena, embedded in the ice, where it had been
+reposing, so geologists tell us, anywhere from
+10,000 to 50,000 years. How the creature
+gradually thawed out of its icy tomb, and the
+tusks were taken by the discoverer and sold
+for ivory; how the dogs fed upon the flesh in
+summer, while bears and wolves feasted upon
+it in winter; how the animal was within an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+ace of being utterly lost to science when, at
+the last moment, the mutilated remains were
+rescued by Mr. Adams, is an old story, often
+told and retold. Suffice it to say that, besides
+the bones, enough of the beast was preserved
+to tell us exactly what was the covering of this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+ancient elephant, and to show that it was a
+creature adapted to withstand the northern
+cold and fitted for living on the branches of
+the birch and hemlock.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_236.jpg" width="400" height="281"  alt="" />
+Fig. 36.&mdash;Skeleton of the Mammoth in the Royal
+Museum of St. Petersburg.
+</div>
+
+<p>The exact birthplace of the mammoth is as
+uncertain as that of many other great characters;
+but his earliest known resting-place is in
+the Cromer Forest Beds of England, a country
+inhabited by him at a time when the German
+Ocean was dry land and Great Britain part of
+a peninsula. Here his remains are found to-day,
+while from the depths of the North Sea
+the hardy trawlers have dredged hundreds, aye
+thousands, of mammoth teeth in company with
+soles and turbot. If, then, the mammoth originated
+in western Europe, and not in that great
+graveyard of fossil elephants, northern India,
+eastward he went spreading over all Europe
+north of the Pyrenees and Alps, save only
+Scandinavia, whose glaciers offered no attractions,
+scattering his bones abundantly by the
+wayside to serve as marvels for future ages.
+Strange indeed have been some of the tales to
+which these and other elephantine remains
+have given rise when they came to light in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+good old days when knowledge of anatomy
+was small and credulity was great. The least
+absurd theory concerning them was that they
+were the bones of the elephants which Hannibal
+brought from Africa. Occasionally they
+were brought forward as irrefutable evidences
+of the deluge; but usually they figured as the
+bones of giants, the most famous of them being
+known as Teutobochus, King of the Cimbri, a
+lusty warrior said to have had a height of nineteen
+feet. Somewhat smaller, but still of respectable
+height, fourteen feet, was "Littell
+Johne" of Scotland, whereof Hector Boece
+wrote, concluding, in a moralizing tone, "Be
+quilk (which) it appears how extravegant and
+squaire pepill grew in oure regioun afore they
+were effeminat with lust and intemperance of
+mouth." More than this, these bones have
+been venerated in Greece and Rome as the remains
+of pagan heroes, and later on worshipped
+as relics of Christian saints. Did not the
+church of Valencia possess an elephant tooth
+which did duty as that of St. Christopher,
+and, so late as 1789, was not a thigh-bone, figuring
+as the arm-bone of a saint, carried in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+procession through the streets in order to
+bring rain?</p>
+
+<p>Out of Europe eastward into Asia the mammoth
+took his way, and having peopled that
+vast region, took advantage of a land connection
+then existing between Asia and North
+America and walked over into Alaska, in company
+with the forerunners of the bison and the
+ancestors of the mountain sheep and Alaskan
+brown bear. Still eastward and southward he
+went, until he came to the Atlantic coast, the
+latitude of southern New York roughly marking
+the southern boundary of the broad domain
+over which the mammoth roamed undisturbed.<a id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>
+Not that of necessity all this vast area
+was occupied at one time; but this was the
+range of the mammoth during Pleistocene
+time, for over all this region his bones and
+teeth are found in greater or less abundance
+and in varying conditions of preservation. In
+regions like parts of Siberia and Alaska, where
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>the bones are entombed in a wet and cold,
+often icy, soil, the bones and tusks are almost
+as perfectly preserved as though they had been
+deposited but a score of years ago, while remains
+so situated that they have been subjected
+to varying conditions of dryness and
+moisture are always in a fragmentary state.
+As previously noted, several more or less entire
+carcasses of the mammoth have been discovered
+in Siberia, only to be lost; and, while no
+entire animal has so far been found in Alaska,
+some day one may yet come to light. That
+there is some possibility of this is shown by the
+discovery, recorded by Mr. Dall, of the partial
+skeleton of a mammoth in the bank of the
+Yukon with some of the fat still present, and
+although this had been partially converted into
+adipocere, it was fresh enough to be used by
+the natives for greasing, not their boots, but
+their boats. And up to the present time this
+is the nearest approach to finding a live mammoth
+in Alaska.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>This must be taken as a very general statement, as the distinction
+between and habitats of Elephas primigenius and Elephas
+columbi, the southern mammoth, are not satisfactorily
+determined; moreover, the two species overlap through a wide
+area of the West and Northwest.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>As to why the mammoth became extinct,
+we <i>know</i> absolutely nothing, although various
+theories, some much more ingenious than plausible,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+have been advanced to account for their
+extermination&mdash;they perished of starvation;
+they were overtaken by floods on their supposed
+migrations and drowned in detachments;
+they fell through the ice, equally in detachments,
+and were swept out to sea. But all
+we can safely say is that long ages ago
+the last one perished off the face of the earth.
+Strange it is, too, that these mighty beasts,
+whose bulk was ample to protect them against
+four-footed foes, and whose woolly coat was
+proof against the cold, should have utterly vanished.
+They ranged from England eastward
+to New York, almost around the world; from
+the Alps to the Arctic Ocean; and in such
+numbers that to-day their tusks are articles of
+commerce, and fossil ivory has its price current
+as well as wheat. Mr. Boyd Dawkins thinks
+that the mammoth was actually exterminated
+by early man, but, even granting that this
+might be true for southern and western Europe,
+it could not be true of the herds that inhabited
+the wastes of Siberia, or of the thousands
+that flourished in Alaska and the western
+United States. So far as man is concerned,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+the mammoth might still be living in these localities,
+where, before the discovery of gold
+drew thousands of miners to Alaska, there were
+vast stretches of wilderness wholly untrodden
+by the foot of man. Neither could this theory
+account for the disappearance of the mastodon
+from North America, where that animal covered
+so vast a stretch of territory that man,
+unaided by nature, could have made little impression
+on its numbers. That many were
+swept out to sea by the flooded rivers of Siberia
+is certain, for some of the low islands off
+the coast are said to be formed of sand, ice,
+and bones of the mammoth, and thence, for
+hundreds of years, have come the tusks which
+are sold in the market beside those of the
+African and Indian elephants.</p>
+
+<p>That man was contemporary with the mammoth
+in southern Europe is fairly certain, for
+not only are the remains of the mammoth and
+man's flint weapons found together, but in a
+few instances some primeval Landseer graved
+on slate, ivory, or reindeer antler a sketchy
+outline of the beast, somewhat impressionistic
+perhaps, but still, like the work of a true artist,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+preserving the salient features. We see the
+curved tusks, the snaky trunk, and the shaggy
+coat that we know belonged to the mammoth,
+and we may feel assured that if early man did
+not conquer the clumsy creature with fire and
+flint, he yet gazed upon him from the safe
+vantage point of some lofty tree or inaccessible
+rock, and then went home to tell his wife
+and neighbors how the animal escaped because
+his bow missed fire. That man and mammoth
+lived together in North America is uncertain;
+so far there is no evidence to show that they
+did, although the absence of such evidence is
+no proof that they did not. That any live
+mammoth has for centuries been seen on the
+Alaskan tundras is utterly improbable, and on
+Mr. C. H. Townsend seems to rest the responsibility
+of having, though quite unintentionally,
+introduced the Alaskan Live Mammoth into
+the columns of the daily press. It befell in this
+wise: Among the varied duties of our revenue
+marine is that of patrolling and exploring the
+shores of arctic Alaska and the waters of the
+adjoining sea, and it is not so many years ago
+that the cutter <i>Corwin</i>, if memory serves<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+aright, held the record of farthest north on the
+Pacific side. On one of these northern trips,
+to the Kotzebue Sound region, famous for the
+abundance of its deposits of mammoth bones,<a id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>
+the <i>Corwin</i> carried Mr. Townsend, then naturalist
+to the United States Fish Commission.
+At Cape Prince of Wales some natives came
+on board bringing a few bones and tusks of
+the mammoth, and upon being questioned as
+to whether or not any of the animals to which
+they pertained were living, promptly replied
+that all were dead, inquiring in turn if the
+white men had ever seen any, and if they
+knew how these animals, so vastly larger than
+a reindeer, looked.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Elephant Point, at the mouth of the Buckland River, is so
+named from the numbers of mammoth bones which have accumulated
+there.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was on
+board a text-book of geology containing the
+well-known cut of the St. Petersburg mammoth,
+and this was brought forth, greatly to
+the edification of the natives, who were delighted
+at recognizing the curved tusks and
+the bones they knew so well. Next the na<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>tives
+wished to know what the outside of the
+creature looked like, and as Mr. Townsend
+had been at Ward's establishment in Rochester
+when the first copy of the Stuttgart restoration
+was made, he rose to the emergency,
+and made a sketch. This was taken ashore,
+together with a copy of the cut of the skeleton
+that was laboriously made by an Innuit
+sprawled out at full length on the deck. Now
+the Innuits, as Mr. Townsend tells us, are
+great gadabouts, making long sledge journeys
+in winter and equally long trips by boat in
+summer, while each season they hold a regular
+fair on Kotzebue Sound, where a thousand or
+two natives gather to barter and gossip. On
+these journeys and at these gatherings the
+sketches were no doubt passed about, copied,
+and recopied, until a large number of Innuits
+had become well acquainted with the appearance
+of the mammoth, a knowledge that naturally
+they were well pleased to display to any
+white visitors. Also, like the Celt, the Alaskan
+native delights to give a "soft answer,"
+and is always ready to furnish the kind of information
+desired. Thus in due time the newspaper<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+man learned that the Alaskans could
+make pictures of the mammoth, and that they
+had some knowledge of its size and habits; so
+with inference and logic quite as good as that
+of the Tungusian peasant, the reporter came
+to the conclusion that somewhere in the frozen
+wilderness the last survivor of the mammoths
+must still be at large. And so, starting on
+the Pacific coast, the Live Mammoth story
+wandered from paper to paper, until it had
+spread throughout the length and breadth of
+the United States, when it was captured by
+Mr. Tukeman, who with much artistic color
+and some realistic touches, transferred it to
+<i>McClure's Magazine</i>, and&mdash;unfortunately for
+the officials thereof&mdash;to the Smithsonian Institution.</p>
+
+<p>And now, once for all, it may be said that
+<i>there is no mounted mammoth</i> to awe the visitor
+to the national collections or to any other;
+and yet there seems no good and conclusive
+reason why there should not be. True, there
+are no live mammoths to be had at any price;
+neither are their carcasses to be had on demand;
+still there is good reason to believe<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+that a much smaller sum than that said to
+have been paid by Mr. Conradi for the mammoth
+which is <i>not</i> in the Smithsonian Institution,
+would place one there.<a id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> It probably
+could not be done in one year; it might not
+be possible in five years; but should any man
+of means wish to secure enduring fame by
+showing the world the mammoth as it stood in
+life, a hundred centuries ago, before the dawn
+of even tradition, he could probably accomplish
+the result by the expenditure of a far less sum
+than it would cost to participate in an international
+yacht race.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Since these lines were written another fine example of the
+Mammoth has been discovered in Siberia and even now (Oct.,
+1901) an expedition is on its way to secure the skin and skeleton
+for the Academy of Natural Sciences at St. Petersburg.</i></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>The mounted skeleton of the mammoth in the museum
+of the Chicago Academy of Science is still the only one on
+exhibition in the United States; this specimen is probably
+the Southern Mammoth, Elephas columbi, a species, or
+race, characterized by its great size and the coarse structure
+of the teeth. Remains of the mammoth are common
+enough but, save in Alaska, they are usually in a poor
+state of preservation or consist of isolated bones or teeth.
+A great many skeletons of mammoth have been found by
+gold miners in Alaska, and with proper care some of
+these could undoubtedly have been secured. Naturally,
+however, the miners do not feel like taking the time and
+trouble to exhume bones whose value is uncertain, while
+the cost of transportation precludes the bringing out of
+many specimens.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Some reports of mammoths have been based on the
+bones of whales, including a skull that was figured in
+the daily papers.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Almost every museum has on exhibition teeth of the
+mammoth, and there is a skull, though from a small individual,
+of the Southern Mammoth in the American
+Museum of Natural History, New York.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The tusk obtained by Mr. Beach and mentioned in
+the text still holds the record for mammoth tusks. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+greatest development of tusks occurred in Elephas ganesa,
+a species found in Pliocene deposits of the Siwalik
+Hills, India. This species appears not to have exceeded
+the existing elephant in bulk, but the tusks are twelve feet
+nine inches long, and two feet two inches in circumference.
+How the animal ever carried them is a mystery,
+both on account of their size and their enormous leverage.
+As for teeth, an upper grinder of Elephas columbi in the
+United States National Museum is ten and one-half
+inches high, nine inches wide, the grinding face being
+eight by five inches. This tooth, which is unusually perfect,
+retaining the outer covering of cement, came from
+Afton, Indian Territory, and weighs a little over fifteen
+pounds. The lower tooth, shown in Fig. 38, is twelve
+inches long, and the grinding face is nine by three and
+one-half inches; this is also from Elephas columbi.
+Grinders of the Northern Mammoth are smaller, and the
+plates of enamel thinner, and closer to one another.
+Mr. F. E. Andrews, of Gunsight, Texas, reports having
+found a femur, or thigh-bone five feet four inches
+long, and a humerus measuring four feet three inches,
+these being the largest bones on record indicating an
+animal fourteen feet high.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>There is a vast amount of literature relating to the
+mammoth, some of it very untrustworthy. A list of all
+discoveries of specimens in the flesh is given by Nordens<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>kiold
+in "The Voyage of the Vega" and "The Mammoth
+and the Flood" by Sir Henry Howorth, is a mine of information.
+Mr. Townsend's "Alaska Live-Mammoth
+Story" may be found in "Forest and Stream" for
+August 14, 1897.</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_250.jpg" width="400" height="173"  alt="" />
+Fig. 37.&mdash;The Mammoth as Engraved by a Primitive
+Artist on a Piece of Mammoth Tusk.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">THE MASTODON</p>
+
+<div class="inset18">
+<p>
+<span class="in8">"<i>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;. who shall place</i><br /></span>
+<i>A limit to the giant's unchained strength?</i>"
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The name mastodon is given to a number of
+species of fossil elephants differing from the
+true elephants, of which the mammoth is an
+example, in the structure of the teeth. In the
+mastodons the crown, or grinding face of
+the tooth, is formed by more or less regular
+<img src="images/i_251.jpg" width="10" height="15" alt="" />
+shaped cross ridges, covered with enamel,
+while in the elephants the enamel takes the
+form of narrow, pocket-shaped plates, set upright
+in the body of the tooth. Moreover, in
+the mastodons the roots of the teeth are long
+prongs, while in the elephants the roots are
+small and irregular. A glance at the cuts will
+show these distinctions better than they can
+be explained by words. Back in the past, however,
+we meet, as we should if there is any truth<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+in the theory of evolution, with elephants having
+an intermediate pattern of teeth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_252.jpg" width="400" height="166"  alt="" />
+Fig. 38.&mdash;Tooth of Mastodon and of Mammoth.
+</div>
+
+<p>There is usually, or at least often, another
+point of difference between elephants and mastodons,
+for many of the latter not only had
+tusks in the upper, but in the lower jaw, and
+these are never found in any of the true elephants.
+The lower tusks are longer and larger
+in the earlier species of mastodon than in
+those of more recent age and in the latest species,
+the common American mastodon, the little
+lower tusks were usually shed early in life.
+These afford some hints of the relationships of
+the mastodon; for in Europe are found remains
+of a huge beast well called Dinotherium,
+or terrible animal, which possessed lower
+tusks only, and these, instead of sticking out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+from the jaw are bent directly downwards.
+No perfect skull of this creature has yet been
+found, but it is believed to have had a short
+trunk. For a long time nothing but the skull
+was known, and some naturalists thought the
+animal to have been a gigantic manatee, or sea
+cow, and that the tusks were used for tearing
+food from the bottom of rivers and for anchoring
+the animal to the bank, just as the walrus
+uses his tusks for digging clams and climbing
+out upon the ice. In the first restorations of
+Dinotherium it is represented lying amidst
+reeds, the feet concealed from view, the head
+alone visible, but now it is pictured as standing
+erect, for the discovery of massive leg-bones
+has definitely settled the question as to
+whether it did or did not have limbs.</p>
+
+<p>There is another hint of relationship in the
+upper tusks of the earlier mastodons, and this
+is the presence of a band of enamel running
+down each tusk. In all gnawing animals the
+front, cutting teeth are formed of soft dentine,
+or ivory, faced with a plate of enamel, just as
+the blade of a chisel or plane is formed of a
+plate of tempered steel backed with soft iron;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+the object of this being the same in both tooth
+and chisel, to keep the edge sharp by wearing
+away the softer material. In the case of the
+chisel this is done by a man with a grindstone,
+but with the tooth it is performed automatically
+and more pleasantly by the gnawing of
+food. In the mastodon and elephant the tusks,
+which are the representatives of the cutting
+teeth of rodents, are wide apart, and of course
+do not gnaw anything, but the presence of
+these enamel bands hints at a time when they
+and their owner were smaller and differently
+shaped, and the teeth were used for cutting.
+Thus, great though the disparity of size may
+be, there is a suggestion that through the mastodon
+the elephant is distantly related to the
+mouse, and that, could we trace their respective
+pedigrees far enough, we might find a common
+ancestor.</p>
+
+<p>This presence of structures that are apparently
+of no use, often worse than useless, is
+regarded as the survival of characters that once
+served some good purpose, like the familiar
+buttons on the sleeve or at the back of a man's
+coat, or the bows and ruffles on a woman's<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+dress. We are told that these are put on "to
+make the dress look pretty," but the student
+regards the bows as vestiges of the time when
+there were no buttons and hooks and eyes had
+not been invented, and dresses were tied together
+with strings or ribbons. As for ruffles,
+they took the place of flounces, and flounces
+are vestiges of the time when a young woman
+wore the greater part of her wardrobe on her
+back, putting on one dress above another, the
+bottoms of the skirts showing like so many
+flounces. So buttons, ruffles, and the vermiform
+appendix of which we hear so much all
+fall in the category of vestigial structures.</p>
+
+<p>Where the mastodons originated, we know
+not: Se&ntilde;or Ameghino thinks their ancestors
+are to be found in Patagonia, and he is very
+probably wrong; Professor Cope thought they
+came from Asia, and he is probably right; or
+they may have immigrated from the convenient
+Antarctica, which is called up to account
+for various facts in the distribution of animals.<a id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>During the past year, 1901, Mr. C. W. Andrews of the
+British Museum has discovered in Egypt a small and primitive
+species of mastodon, also the remains of another animal which he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+thinks may be the long sought ancestor of the elephant family,
+which includes the mammoth and mastodon.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Neither do we at present know just how many
+species of mastodons there may have been in
+the Western Hemisphere, for most of them are
+known from scattered teeth, single jaws, and
+odd bones, so that we cannot tell just what differences
+may be due to sex or individual variation.
+It is certain, however, that several distinct
+kinds, or species, have inhabited various
+parts of North America, while remains of others
+occur in South America. <i>The</i> mastodon, however,
+the one most recent in point of time, and
+the best known because its remains are scattered
+far and wide over pretty much the length
+and breadth of the United States, and are
+found also in southern and western Canada,
+is the well-named <i>Mastodon americanus</i>,<a id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> and
+unless otherwise specified this alone will be
+meant when the name mastodon is used. In
+some localities the mastodon seems to have
+abounded, but between the Hudson and Connecticut
+Rivers indications of its former pres<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>ence
+are rare, and east of that they are practically
+wanting. The best preserved specimens
+come from Ulster and Orange Counties, New
+York, for these seem to have furnished the
+animal with the best facilities for getting mired.
+Just west of the Catskills, parallel with the
+valley of the Hudson, is a series of meadows,
+bogs, and pools marking the sites of swamps
+that came into existence after the recession of
+the mighty ice-sheet that long covered eastern
+North America, and in these many a mastodon,
+seeking for food or water, or merely wallowing
+in the mud, stuck fast and perished
+miserably. And here to-day the spade of the
+farmer as he sinks a ditch to drain what is left
+of some beaver pond of bygone days, strikes
+some bone as brown and rugged as a root, so
+like a piece of water-soaked wood that nine
+times out of ten it is taken for a fragment of
+tree-trunk.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>This has also been called giganteus and ohioticus, but the
+name americanus claims priority, and should therefore be used.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The first notice of the mastodon in North
+America goes back to 1712, and is found in a
+letter from Cotton Mather to Dr. Woodward
+(of England?) written at Boston on November
+17th, in which he speaks of a large work in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+manuscript entitled <i>Biblia Americana</i>, and
+gives as a sample a note on the passage in Genesis
+(VI. 4) in which we read that "there
+were giants in the earth in those days." We
+are told that this is confirmed by "the bones
+and teeth of some large animal found lately in
+Albany, in New England, which for some
+reason he thinks to be human; particularly a
+tooth brought from the place where it was
+found to New York in 1705, being a very large
+grinder, weighing four pounds and three quarters;
+with a bone supposed to be a thigh-bone,
+seventeen feet long," the total length of the
+body being taken as seventy-five feet. Thus
+bones of the mastodon, as well as those of the
+mammoth, have done duty as those of giants.</p>
+
+<p>And as the first mastodon remains recorded
+from North America came from the region
+west of the Hudson, so the first fairly complete
+skeleton also came from that locality,
+secured at a very considerable outlay of money
+and a still more considerable expenditure of
+labor by the exertions of C. W. Peale. This
+specimen was described at some length by
+Rembrandt Peale in a privately printed pamphlet,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+now unfortunately rare, and described
+in some respects better than has been done by
+any subsequent writer, since the points of difference
+between various parts of the mastodon
+and elephant were clearly pointed out. This
+skeleton was exhibited in London, and afterwards
+at Peale's Museum in Philadelphia
+where, with much other valuable material, it
+was destroyed by fire.</p>
+
+<p>Struck by the evident crushing power of the
+great ridged molars, Peale was led to believe
+that the mastodon was a creature of carnivorous
+habits, and so described it, but this error
+is excusable, the more that to this day, when
+the mastodon is well known, and its description
+published time and again in the daily papers,
+finders of the teeth often consider them as belonging
+to some huge beast of prey.</p>
+
+<p>Since the time of Peale several fine specimens
+have been taken from Ulster and Orange
+Counties, among them the well-known "Warren
+Mastodon," and there is not the slightest
+doubt that many more will be recovered from
+the meadows, swamps, and pond holes of these
+two counties.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_260.jpg" width="400" height="214"  alt="" />
+Fig. 39.&mdash;The Missourium of Koch, from a Tracing of the Figure Illustrating
+Koch&#39;s Description.
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The next mastodon to appear on the scene
+was the so-called Missourium of Albert Koch,
+which he constructed somewhat as he did the
+Hydrarchus (see p. 61) of several individuals
+pieced together, thus forming a skeleton that
+was a monster in more ways than one. To
+heighten the effect, the curved tusks were so
+placed that they stood out at right angles to
+the sides of the head, like the swords upon
+the axles of ancient war chariots. Like Peale's
+specimen this was exhibited in London, and
+there it still remains, for, stripped of its superfluous
+bones, and remounted, it may now be
+seen in the British Museum.</p>
+
+<p>Many a mastodon has come to light since
+the time of Koch, for while it is commonly
+supposed that remains of the animal are great
+rarities, as a matter of fact they are quite
+common, and it may safely be said that during
+the seasons of ditching, draining, and well-digging
+not a week passes without one or more
+mastodons being unearthed. Not that these
+are complete skeletons, very far from it, the
+majority of finds are scattered teeth, crumbling
+tusks, or massive leg-bones, but still the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+mastodon is far commoner in the museums of
+this country than is the African elephant, for
+at the present date there are eleven of the
+former to one of the latter, the single skeleton
+of African elephant being that of Jumbo in
+the American Museum of Natural History.
+If one may judge by the abundance of bones,
+mastodons must have been very numerous
+in some favored localities such as parts of
+Michigan, Florida, and Missouri and about
+Big Bone Lick, Ky. Perhaps the most noteworthy
+of all deposits is that at Kimmswick,
+about twenty miles south of St. Louis, where
+in a limited area Mr. L. W. Beehler has exhumed
+bones representing several hundred
+individuals, varying in size from a mere baby
+mastodon up to the great tusker whose wornout
+teeth proclaim that he had reached the
+limit of even mastodonic old age. The spot
+where this remarkable deposit was found is at
+the foot of a bluff near the junction of two
+little streams, and it seems probable that in
+the days when these were larger the spring
+floods swept down the bodies of animals that
+had perished during the winter to ground in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+an eddy beneath the bluff. Or as the place
+abounds in springs of sulphur and salt water
+it may be that this was where the animals
+assembled during cold weather, just as the
+moas are believed to have gathered in the
+swamps of New Zealand, and here the weaker
+died and left their bones.</p>
+
+<p>The mastodon must have looked very much
+like any other elephant, though a little shorter
+in the legs and somewhat more heavily built
+than either of the living species, while the
+head was a trifle flatter and the jaw decidedly
+longer. The tusks are a variable quantity,
+sometimes merely bowing outwards, often
+curving upwards to form a half circle; they
+were never so long as the largest mammoth
+tusks, but to make up for this they were a
+shade stouter for their length. As the mastodon
+ranged well to the north it is fair to suppose
+that he may have been covered with long
+hair, a supposition that seems to be borne out
+by the discovery, noted by Rembrandt Peale, of
+a mass of long, coarse, woolly hair buried in one
+of the swamps of Ulster County, New York.
+And with these facts in mind, aided by photographs
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+of various skeletons of mastodons, Mr.
+Gleeson made the restoration which accompanies
+this chapter.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_264.jpg" width="400" height="291"  alt="" />
+Fig. 40.&mdash;The Mastodon.
+<br />
+<i>From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson.</i>
+</div>
+
+<p>As for the size of the mastodon, this, like
+that of the mammoth, is popularly much over-estimated,
+and it is more than doubtful if any
+attained the height of a full-grown African
+elephant. The largest femur, or thigh-bone,
+that has come under the writer's notice was
+one he measured as it lay in the earth at
+Kimmswick, and this was just four feet long,
+three inches shorter than the thigh-bone of
+Jumbo. Several of the largest thigh-bones
+measured show so striking an unanimity in
+size, between 46 and 47 inches in length, that
+we may be pretty sure they represent the average
+old "bull" mastodon, and if we say that
+these animals stood ten feet high we are
+probably doing them full justice. An occasional
+tusk reaches a length of ten feet, but
+seven or eight is the usual size, with a diameter
+of as many inches, and this is no larger than
+the tusks of the African elephant would grow
+if they had a chance. It is painful to be
+obliged to scale down the mastodon as we have
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+just done the mammoth, but if any reader
+knows of specimens larger than those noted,
+he should by all means publish their measurements.<a id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>As skeletons are sometimes mounted, they stand a full foot
+or more higher at the shoulders than the animal stood in life,
+this being caused by raising the body until the shoulder-blades
+are far below the tips of the vertebr&aelig;, a position they never assume
+in life.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The disappearance of the mastodon is as difficult
+to account for as that of the mammoth,
+and, as will be noted, there is absolutely no
+evidence to show that man had any hand in it.
+Neither can it be ascribed to change of climate,
+for the mastodon, as indicated by the wide distribution
+of its bones, was apparently adapted
+to a great diversity of climates, and was as
+much at home amid the cool swamps of Michigan
+and New York as on the warm savannas
+of Florida and Louisiana. Certainly the much
+used, and abused, glacial epoch cannot be held
+accountable for the extermination of the creature,
+for the mastodon came into New York
+after the recession of the great ice-sheet, and
+tarried to so late a date that bones buried in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>the swamps retain much of their animal matter.
+So recent, comparatively speaking, has
+been the disappearance of the mastodon, and
+so fresh-looking are some of its bones, that
+Thomas Jefferson thought in his day that it
+might still be living in some part of the then
+unexplored Northwest.</p>
+
+<p>It is a moot question whether or not man
+and the mastodon were contemporaries in
+North America, and while many there be who,
+like the writer of these lines, believe that this
+was the case, an expression of belief is not a
+demonstration of fact. The best that can be
+said is that there are scattered bits of testimony,
+slight though they are, which seem to
+point that way, but no one so strong by itself
+that it could not be shaken by sharp cross-questioning
+and enable man to prove an alibi
+in a trial by jury. For example, in the great
+bone deposit at Kimmswick, Mo., Mr. Beehler
+found a flint arrowhead, but this may have lain
+just over the bone-bearing layer, or have got
+in by some accident in excavating. How easily
+a mistake may be made is shown by the report
+sent to the United States National Museum of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+many arrowheads associated with mastodon
+bones in a spring at Afton, Indian Territory.
+This spring was investigated, and a few mastodon
+bones and flint arrowheads were found,
+but the latter were in a stratum just above the
+bones, although this was overlooked by the first
+diggers.<a id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Koch reported finding charcoal and
+arrowheads so associated with mastodon bones
+that he inferred the animal to have been destroyed
+by fire and arrows after it became
+mired. It has been said that Koch could have
+had no object in disseminating this report, and
+hence that it may be credited, but he had just
+as much interest in doing this as he did in fabricating
+the Hydrarchus and the Missourium,
+and his testimony is not to be considered seriously.
+It seems to be with the mastodon
+much as it is with the sea-serpent; the latter
+never appears to a naturalist, remains of the
+former are never found by a trained observer
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>associated with indications of the presence of
+man. Perhaps an exception should be made
+in the case of Professor J. M. Clarke, who
+found fragments of charcoal in a deposit of
+muck under some bones of mastodon.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>This locality has just been carefully investigated by Mr.
+W. H. Holmes of the United States National Museum who
+found bones of the mastodon and Southern Mammoth associated
+with arrowheads. But he also found fresh bones of bison,
+horse, and wolf, showing that these and the arrowheads had
+simply sunk to the level of the older deposit.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>We may pass by the so-called "Elephant
+Mound," which to the eye of an unimaginative
+observer looks as if it might have been intended
+for any one of several beasts; also, with
+bated breath and due respect for the bitter controversy
+waged over them, pass we by the elephant
+pipes. There remains, then, not a bit
+of man's handiwork, not a piece of pottery, engraved
+stone, or scratched bone that can <i>unhesitatingly</i>
+be said to have been wrought into
+the shape of an elephant before the coming of
+the white man. True, there is "The Lenape
+Stone," found near Doyleston, Pa., in 1872,
+a gorget graven on one side with the representation
+of men attacking an elephant, while the
+other bears a number of figures of various animals.
+The good faith of the finder of this
+stone is unimpeachable, but it is a curious fact
+that, while this gorget is elaborately decorated
+on both sides, no similar stone, out of all that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+have been found, bears any image whatsoever.
+On the other hand, if not made by the aborigines,
+who made it, why was it made, and why
+did nine years elapse between the discovery of
+the first and second portions of the broken ornament?
+These are questions the reader may
+decide for himself; the author will only say
+that to his mind the drawing is too elaborate,
+and depicts entirely too much to have been
+made by a primitive artist. A much better bit
+of testimony seems to be presented by a fragment
+of Fulgur shell found near Hollyoak,
+Del., and now in the United States National
+Museum, which bears a very rudely scratched
+image of an animal that may have been intended
+for a mastodon or a bison. This piece
+of shell is undeniably old, but there is, unfortunately,
+the uncertainty just mentioned as to
+the animal depicted. The familiar legend of
+the Big Buffalo that destroyed animals and
+men and defied even the lightnings of the
+Great Spirit has been thought by some to
+have originated in a tradition of the mastodon
+handed down from ancient times; but why
+consider that the mastodon is meant? Why<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+not a legendary bison that has increased with
+years of story-telling? And so the co-existence
+of man and mastodon must rest as a case
+of not proven, although there is a strong probability
+that the two did live together in the
+dim ages of the past, and some day the evidence
+may come to light that will prove it beyond
+a peradventure. If scientific men are
+charged with obstinacy and unwarranted incredulity
+in declining to accept the testimony
+so far presented, it must be remembered that
+the evidence as to the existence of the sea
+serpent is far stronger, since it rests on the testimony
+of eye-witnesses, and yet the creature
+himself has never been seen by a trained observer,
+nor has any specimen, not a scale, a
+tooth, or a bone, ever made its way into any
+museum.</p>
+
+<h3><i>REFERENCES</i></h3>
+
+<p><i>There are at least eleven mounted skeletons of the
+Mastodon in the United States, and the writer trusts he
+may be pardoned for mentioning only those which are
+most accessible. These are in the American Museum of
+Natural History, New York; the State Museum, Al<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>bany, N. Y.;
+Field Columbian Museum, Chicago; Carnegie
+Museum, Pittsburg; Museum of Comparative
+Zo&ouml;logy, Cambridge, Mass. There is no mounted skeleton
+in the United States National Museum, nor has there
+ever been.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The heaviest pair of tusks is in the possession of T. O.
+Tuttle, Seneca, Mich., and they are nine and one-half
+inches in diameter, and a little over eight feet long;
+very few tusks, however, reach eight inches in diameter.
+The thigh-bone of an old male mastodon measures from
+forty-five to forty-six and one-half inches long, the humerus
+from thirty-five to forty inches. The height of
+the mounted skeleton is of little value as an indication of
+size, since it depends so much upon the manner in which
+the skeleton is mounted. The grinders of the mastodon
+have three cross ridges, save the last, which has four, and
+a final elevation, or heel. This does not apply to the
+teeth of very young animals. The presence or absence
+of the last grinder will show whether or not the animal is
+of full age and size, while the amount of wear indicates
+the comparative age of the specimen.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The skeleton of the "Warren Mastodon" is described
+at length by Dr. J. C. Warren, in a quarto volume entitled
+"Mastodon Giganteus." There is much information
+in a little book by J. P. MacLean, "Mastodon,
+Mammoth, and Man," but the reader must not accept all
+its statements unhesitatingly. The first volume, 1887,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+of the New Scribner's Magazine contains an article on
+"American Elephant Myths," by Professor W. B. Scott,
+but he is under an erroneous impression regarding the
+size of the mastodon, and photographs of the Maya
+carvings show that their resemblance to elephants has been
+exaggerated in the wood cuts. The story of the Lenape
+Stone is told at length by H. C. Mercer in "The Lenape
+Stone, or the Indian and the Mammoth."</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/i_274.jpg" width="400" height="182"  alt="" />
+Fig. 41.&mdash;The Lenape Stone, Reduced.
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+<p class="h3">WHY DO ANIMALS BECOME EXTINCT?</p>
+
+<div class="inset18">
+<p>
+"<i>And Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp<br />
+Abode his destined Hour and went his way.</i>"<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is often asked "why do animals become extinct?"
+but the question is one to which it is
+impossible to give a comprehensive and satisfactory
+reply; this chapter does not pretend
+to do so, merely to present a few aspects of
+this complicated, many-sided problem.</p>
+
+<p>In very many cases it may be said that actual
+extermination has not taken place, but
+that in the course of evolution one species has
+passed into another; species may have been
+lost, but the race, or phylum endures, just as
+in the growth of a tree, the twigs and branches
+of the sapling disappear, while the tree, as a
+whole, grows onward and upward. This is
+what we see in the horse, which is the living
+representative of an unbroken line reaching<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+back to the little Eocene Hyracothere. So in
+a general way it may be said that much of
+what at the first glance we might term extinction
+is really the replacement of one set of
+animals by another better adapted to surrounding
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there are many cases of animals, and
+particularly of large animals, so peculiar in
+their make up, so very obviously adapted to
+their own special surroundings that it requires
+little imagination to see that it would have
+been a difficult matter for them to have responded
+to even a slight change in the world
+about them. Such great and necessarily sluggish
+brutes as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus,
+with their tons of flesh, small heads, and feeble
+teeth, were obviously reared in easy circumstances,
+and unfitted to succeed in any strenuous
+struggle for existence. Stegosaurus, with
+his bizarre array of plates and spines, and huge-headed
+Triceratops, had evidently carried specialization
+to an extreme, while in turn the
+carnivorous forms must have required an abundant
+supply of slow and easily captured prey.</p>
+
+<p>Coming down to a more recent epoch, when<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+the big Titanotheres flourished, it is easy to see
+from a glance at their large, simple teeth
+that these beasts needed an ample provision of
+coarse vegetation, and as they seem never to
+have spread far beyond their birthplace, climatic
+change, modifying even a comparatively
+limited area, would suffice to sweep them out
+of existence. To use the epitaph proposed by
+Professor Marsh for the tombstone of one of
+the Dinosaurs, many a beast might say, "I,
+and my race perished of over specialization."
+To revert to the horse it will be remembered
+that this very fate is believed to have overtaken
+those almost horses the European Hippotheres;
+they reached a point where no further progress
+was possible, and fell by the wayside.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, still another class of cases
+where species, families, orders, even, seem to
+have passed out of existence without sufficient
+cause. Those great marine reptiles, the Ichthyosaurs,
+of Europe, the Plesiosaurs and Mosasaurs,
+of our own continent, seem to have
+been just as well adapted to an aquatic life as
+the whales, and even better than the seals, and
+we can see no reason why Columbus should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+not have found these creatures still disporting
+themselves in the Gulf of Mexico. The best
+we can do is to fall back on an unknown "law
+of progress," and say that the trend of life is
+toward the replacement of large, lower animals
+by those smaller and intellectually higher.</p>
+
+<p>But <i>why</i> there should be an allotted course
+to any group of animals, why some species
+come to an end when they are seemingly as
+well fitted to endure as others now living, we
+do not know, and if we say that a time comes
+when the germ-plasm is incapable of further
+subdivision, we merely express our ignorance
+in an unnecessary number of words. The
+mammoth and mastodon have already been
+cited as instances of animals that have unaccountably
+become extinct, and these examples
+are chosen from among many on account of
+their striking nature. The great ground sloths,
+the Mylodons, Megatheres, and their allies, are
+another case in point. At one period or another
+they reached from Oregon to Virginia,
+Florida, and Patagonia, though it is not
+claimed that they covered all this area at one
+time. And, while it may be freely admitted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+that in some portions of their range they may
+have been extirpated by a change in food-supply,
+due in turn to a change in climate, it seems
+preposterous to claim that there was not at all
+times, somewhere in this vast expanse of territory,
+a climate mild enough and a food-supply
+large enough for the support of even these
+huge, sluggish creatures. We may evoke the
+aid of primitive man to account for the disappearance
+of this race of giants, and we know
+that the two were coeval in Patagonia, where
+the sloths seem to have played the r&ocirc;le of domesticated
+animals, but again it seems incredible
+that early man, with his flint-tipped spears
+and arrows, should have been able to slay even
+such slow beasts as these to the very last individual.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, in modern times man has directly
+exterminated many animals, while by the introduction
+of dogs, cats, pigs, and goats he has
+indirectly not only thinned the ranks of animals,
+but destroyed plant life on an enormous
+scale. But in the past man's capabilities for
+harm were infinitely less than now, while of
+course the greatest changes took place before<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+man even existed, so that, while he is responsible
+for the great changes that have taken place
+in the world's flora and fauna during recent
+times, his influence, as a whole, has been insignificant.
+Thus, while man exterminated the
+great northern sea-cow, Rytina, and Pallas's
+cormorant on the Commander Islands, these
+animals were already restricted to this circumscribed
+area<a id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> by natural causes, so that man
+but finished what nature had begun. The extermination
+of the great auk in European
+waters was somewhat similar. There is, however,
+this unfortunate difference between extermination
+wrought by man and that brought
+about by natural causes: the extermination of
+species by nature is ordinarily slow, and the
+place of one is taken by another, while the destruction
+wrought by man is rapid, and the gaps
+he creates remain unfilled.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>It is possible that the cormorant may always have been confined
+to this one spot, but this is probably not the case with the
+sea-cow.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Not so very long ago it was customary to
+account for changes in the past life of the
+globe by earthquakes, volcanic outbursts, or
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>cataclysms of such appalling magnitude that
+the whole face of nature was changed, and entire
+races of living beings swept out of existence
+at once. But it is now generally conceded
+that while catastrophes have occurred, yet, vast
+as they may have been, their effects were comparatively
+local, and, while the life of a limited
+region may have been ruthlessly blotted out,
+life as a whole was but little affected. The
+eruption of Krakatoa shook the earth to its centre
+and was felt for hundreds of miles around,
+yet, while it caused the death of thousands of
+living beings, it remains to be shown that it
+produced any effect on the life of the region
+taken in its entirety.</p>
+
+<p>Changes in the life of the globe have been in
+the main slow and gradual, and in response to
+correspondingly slow changes in the level of
+portions of the earth's crust, with their far-reaching
+effects on temperature, climate, and
+vegetation. Animals that were what is termed
+plastic kept pace with the altering conditions
+about them and became modified, too, while
+those that could not adapt themselves to their
+surroundings died out.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>How slowly changes may take place is
+shown by the occurrence of a depression in the
+Isthmus of Panama, in comparatively recent
+geologic time, permitting free communication
+between the Atlantic and Pacific, a sort of natural
+inter-oceanic canal. And yet the alterations
+wrought by this were, so to speak, superficial,
+affecting only some species of shore fishes
+and invertebrates, having no influence on the
+animals of the deeper waters. Again, on the
+Pacific coast are now found a number of shells
+that, as we learn from fossils, were in Pliocene
+time common on both coasts of the United
+States, and Mr. Dall interprets this to mean
+that when this continent was rising, the steeper
+shore on the Pacific side permitted the shell-fish
+to move downward and adapt themselves to
+the ever changing shore, while on the Atlantic
+side the drying of a wide strip of level sea-bottom
+in a relatively short time exterminated a
+large proportion of the less active mollusks.
+And in this instance "relatively short" means
+positively long; for, compared to the rise of a
+continent from the ocean's bed, the flow of a
+glacier is the rapid rush of a mountain torrent.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, too, while a tendency to vary seems to
+be inherent in animals, some appear to be vastly
+more susceptible than others to outside influences,
+to respond much more readily to any
+change in the world about them. In fact, Professor
+Cook has recently suggested that the inborn
+tendency to variation is sufficient in itself
+to account for evolution, this tendency being
+either repressed or stimulated as external conditions
+are stable or variable.</p>
+
+<p>The more uniform the surrounding conditions,
+and the simpler the animal, the smaller
+is the liability to change, and some animals
+that dwell in the depths of the ocean, where
+light and temperature vary little, if any, remain
+at a standstill for long periods of time.</p>
+
+<p>The genus Lingula, a small shell, traces its
+ancestry back nearly to the base of the Ordovician
+system of rocks, an almost inconceivable
+lapse of time, while one species of brachiopod
+shell endures unchanged from the Trenton
+Limestone to the Lower Carboniferous. In
+the first case one species has been replaced by
+another, so that the shell of to-day is not exactly
+like its very remote ancestor, but that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+the type of shell should have remained unchanged
+when so many other animals have
+arisen, flourished for a time, and perished,
+means that there was slight tendency to variation,
+and that the surrounding conditions were
+uniform. Says Professor Brooks, speaking of
+Lingula: "The everlasting hills are the type of
+venerable antiquity; but Lingula has seen the
+continents grow up, and has maintained its integrity
+unmoved by the convulsions which
+have given the crust of the earth its present
+form."</p>
+
+<p>Many instances of sudden but local extermination
+might be adduced, but among them
+that of the tile-fish is perhaps the most striking.
+This fish, belonging to a tropical family
+having its headquarters in the Gulf of Mexico,
+was discovered in 1879 in moderately deep
+water to the southward of Massachusetts and
+on the edge of the Gulf Stream, where it was
+taken in considerable numbers. In the spring
+of 1882 vessels arriving at New York reported
+having passed through great numbers of dead
+and dying fishes, the water being thickly dotted
+with them for miles. From samples brought<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+in, it was found that the majority of these were
+tile-fish, while from the reports of various vessels
+it was shown that the area covered by dead
+fish amounted to somewhere between 5,000
+and 7,500 square miles, and the total number
+of dead was estimated at not far from <i>a billion</i>.
+This enormous and widespread destruction is
+believed to have been caused by an unwonted
+duration of northerly and easterly winds, which
+drove the cold arctic current inshore and southwards,
+chilling the warm belt in which the tile-fish
+resided and killing all in that locality. It
+was thought possible that the entire race might
+have been destroyed, but, while none were
+taken for many years, in 1899 and in 1900 a
+number were caught, showing that the species
+was beginning to reoccupy the waters from
+which it had been driven years before.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of any great fall in temperature
+on animals specially adapted to a warm climate
+is also illustrated by the destruction of the
+Manatees in the Sebastian River, Florida, by
+the winter of 1894-95, which came very near
+exterminating this species. Readers may remember
+that this was the winter that wrought<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+such havoc with the blue-birds, while in the
+vicinity of Washington, D. C., the fish-crows
+died by hundreds, if not by thousands.</p>
+
+<p>Fishes may also be exterminated over large
+areas by outbursts of poisonous gases from
+submarine volcanoes, or more rarely by some
+vast lava flood pouring into the sea and actually
+cooking all living beings in the vicinity. And
+in the past these outbreaks took place on a
+much larger scale than now, and naturally
+wrought more widespread destruction.</p>
+
+<p>A recent instance of local extermination is
+the total destruction of a humming-bird, <i>Bellona
+ornata</i>, peculiar to the island of St. Vincent,
+by the West Indian hurricane of 1898,
+but this is naturally extirpation on a very small
+scale.</p>
+
+<p>Still, the problems of nature are so involved
+that while local destruction is ordinarily of
+little importance, or temporary in its effects, it
+may lead to the annihilation of a species by
+breaking a race of animals into isolated groups,
+thereby leading to inbreeding and slow decline.
+The European bison, now confined to a part of
+Lithuania and a portion of the Caucasus, seems<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+to be slowly but surely approaching extinction
+in spite of all efforts to preserve the race, and
+no reason can be assigned for this save that the
+small size of the herds has led to inbreeding
+and general decadence.</p>
+
+<p>In other ways, too, local calamity may be
+sweeping in its effects, and that is by the destruction
+of animals that resort to one spot during
+the breeding season, like the fur-seals and
+some sea-birds, or pass the winter months in
+great flocks or herds, as do the ducks and elk.
+The supposed decimation of the Moas by severe
+winters has been already discussed, and the
+extermination of the great auk in European
+waters was indirectly due to natural causes.
+These birds bred on the small, almost inaccessible
+island of Eldey, off the coast of Iceland,
+and when, through volcanic disturbances,
+this islet sank into the sea, the few birds were
+forced to other quarters, and as these were, unfortunately,
+easily reached, the birds were slain
+to the last one.</p>
+
+<p>From the great local abundance of their remains,
+it has been thought that the curious
+short-legged Pliocene rhinoceros, <i>Aphelops fos<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>siger</i>,
+was killed off in the West by blizzards
+when the animals were gathered in their winter
+quarters, and other long-extinct animals,
+too, have been found under such conditions as
+to suggest a similar fate.</p>
+
+<p>Among local catastrophes brought about by
+unusually prolonged cold may be cited the
+decimation of the fur-seal herds of the Pribilof
+Islands in 1834 and 1859, when the breeding
+seals were prevented from landing by the
+presence of ice-floes, and perished by thousands.
+Peculiar interest is attached to this
+case, because the restriction of the northern
+fur-seals to a few isolated, long undiscovered
+islands, is believed to have been brought about
+by their complete extermination in other localities
+by prehistoric man. Had these two
+seasons killed all the seals, it would have been
+a reversal of the customary extermination by
+man of a species reduced in numbers by nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of large animals another element
+probably played a part. The larger the animal,
+the fewer young, as a rule, does it bring
+forth at a birth, the longer are the intervals
+between births, and the slower the growth of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+the young. The loss of two or three broods
+of sparrows or two or three litters of rabbits
+makes comparatively little difference, as the
+loss is soon supplied, but the death of the
+young of the larger and higher mammals is a
+more serious matter. A factor that has probably
+played an important r&ocirc;le in the extinction
+of animals is the relation that exists between
+various animals, and the relations that also
+exist between animals and plants, so that the
+existence of one is dependent on that of another.
+Thus no group of living beings, plants
+or animals, can be affected without in some
+way affecting others, so that the injury or
+destruction of some plant may result in serious
+harm to some animal. Nearly everyone is
+familiar with the classic example given by Darwin
+of the effect of cats on the growth of red
+clover. This plant is fertilized by bumble bees
+only, and if the field mice, which destroy the
+nests of the bees, were not kept in check by
+cats, or other small carnivores, their increase
+would lessen the numbers of the bees and this
+in turn would cause a dearth of clover.</p>
+
+<p>The yuccas present a still more wonderful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+example of the dependence of plants on animals,
+for their existence hangs on that of a
+small moth whose peculiar structure and habits
+bring about the fertilization of the flower.
+The two probably developed side by side until
+their present state of inter-dependence was
+reached, when the extinction of the one would
+probably bring about that of the other.</p>
+
+<p>It is this inter-dependence of living things
+that makes the outcome of any direct interference
+with the natural order of things more
+or less problematical, and sometimes brings
+about results quite different from what were
+expected or intended.</p>
+
+<p>The gamekeepers on the grouse moors of
+Scotland systematically killed off all birds of
+prey because they caught some of the grouse,
+but this is believed to have caused far more
+harm than good through permitting weak and
+sickly birds, that would otherwise have fallen
+a prey to hawks, to live and disseminate the
+grouse distemper.</p>
+
+<p>The destruction of sheep by coyotes led the
+State of California to place a bounty on the
+heads of these animals, with the result that in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+eighteen months the State was called upon to
+pay out $187,485. As a result of the war on
+coyotes the animals on which they fed, notably
+the rabbits, increased so enormously that in
+turn a bounty was put on rabbits, the damage
+these animals caused the fruit-growers being
+greater than the losses among sheep-owners
+from the depredations of coyotes. And so,
+says Dr. Palmer, "In this remarkable case
+of legislation a large bounty was offered by a
+county in the interest of fruit-growers to counteract
+the effects of a State bounty expended
+mainly for the benefit of sheep-owners!"</p>
+
+<p>Professor Shaler, in noting the sudden disappearance
+of such trees as the gums, magnolias,
+and tulip poplars from the Miocene flora
+of Europe has suggested that this may have
+been due to the attacks, for a series of years,
+of some insect enemy like the gipsy moth, and
+the theory is worth considering, although it
+must be looked upon as a possibility rather
+than a probability. Still, anyone familiar with
+the ravages of the gipsy moth in Massachusetts,
+where the insect was introduced by accident,
+can readily imagine what <i>might</i> have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+been the effect of some sudden increase in the
+numbers of such a pest on the forests of the
+past. Trees might resist the attacks of enemies
+and the destruction of their leaves for
+two or three years, but would be destroyed by
+a few additional seasons of defoliation.</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily the abnormal increase of any insect
+is promptly followed by an increase in the
+number of its enemies; the pest is killed off,
+the destroyers die of starvation and nature's
+balance is struck. But if by some accident,
+such as two or three consecutive seasons of
+wet, drought, or cold, the natural increase of
+the enemies was checked, the balance of nature
+would be temporarily destroyed and serious
+harm done. That such accidents may occur
+is familiar to us by the damage wrought in
+Florida and other Southern States by the unwonted
+severity of the winters of 1893, 1895,
+and 1899.</p>
+
+<p>If any group of forest trees was destroyed in
+the manner suggested by Professor Shaler, the
+effects would be felt by various plants and animals.
+In the first place, the insects that fed
+on these trees would be forced to seek another<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+source of food and would be brought into a
+silent struggle with forms already in possession,
+while the destruction of one set of plants
+would be to the advantage of those with which
+they came into competition and to the disadvantage
+of vegetation that was protected by
+the shade. Finally, these changed conditions
+would react in various ways on the smaller
+birds and mammals, the general effect being,
+to use a well-worn simile, like that of casting
+a stone into a quiet pool and setting in motion
+ripples that sooner or later reach to every part
+of the margin.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary to warn the reader
+that for the most part this is purely conjectural,
+for from the nature of the case it is bound
+to be so. But it is one of the characteristics
+of educated man that he wishes to know the
+why and wherefore of everything, and is in a
+condition of mental unhappiness until he has
+at least formulated some theory which seems
+to harmonize with the visible facts. And
+from the few glimpses we get of the extinction
+of animals from natural causes we must formulate
+a theory to fit the continued extermination<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+that has been taking place ever since living
+beings came into the world and were pitted
+against one another and against their surroundings
+in the silent and ceaseless struggle
+for existence.</p>
+
+<p class="h3">THE END.</p>
+
+<hr class="chapter" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+<p class="h3"><i>The asterisk denotes that the animal or object is figured
+on or opposite the page referred to.</i></p>
+
+<p>
+&AElig;pyornis, egg of, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>,* <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
+<span class="in1">eggs found in swamps, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</span><br />
+<span class="in1">found floating, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">eggs used for bowls, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">origin of fable of Roc, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Alaskan Live Mammoth Story, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Anom&oelig;pus tracks, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Apteryx egg, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br />
+<br />
+Arch&aelig;opteryx, description of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br />
+<span class="in1">discovery of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">earliest known bird, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">specimens of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>,* <a href="#Page_88">88</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">wing, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>,* <a href="#Page_73">73</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Archelon, a great turtle, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Basilosaurus, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<span class="in1">See also Zeuglodon</span><br />
+<br />
+Beehler, L. W., <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br />
+<br />
+Birds, always clad in feathers, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<span class="in1">earliest, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[244]</span>
+Birds, first intimation of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<span class="in1">rarity of fossil, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">related to reptiles, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">wings of embryonic, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">with teeth, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Bison, European, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Books of reference, xix, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Breeding of large animals, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Brontornis, size of leg-bones, <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<br />
+Brontosaurus, size of bones, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>,* <a href="#Page_97">97</a>,* <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+Brooks, W. K., on Lingula, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
+<br />
+Buffalo legend, 2<a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Buttons as vestigial structures, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Carcharodon auriculatus, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">megalodon, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">estimated size, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Carson City footprints, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+Casts, how formed, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+Cats and clover, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+Cephalaspis, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>*<br />
+<br />
+Ceratosaurus, habits, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">skull, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Changes in Nature slow, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum">[245]</span>
+Cheirotherium, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br />
+<br />
+Chlamydosaurus, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+Claosaurus. See Thespesius<br />
+<br />
+Climate, changes in western United States, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
+<br />
+Clover and cats, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+Cold, effects of, on animals, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Cold winters, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Collecting fossils, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>-<a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
+<br />
+Color of large land animals, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<span class="in1">of young animals, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Covering of extinct animals sometimes indicated, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
+<br />
+Coyotes, effect of their destruction on fruit, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Dall, W. H., theory as to extinction of mollusks, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+Dinosaurs, bones of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br />
+<span class="in1">brain of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">collections of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">compared to marsupials, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">first discovered, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">food required by, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">hip-bones mistaken for shoulder-blade, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">Professor Marsh's epitaph for, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">range, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">recognized as new order of reptiles, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">related to ostrich and alligator, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">size of, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">tracks, ascribed to birds, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum">[246]</span>
+Dinotherium, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Diplodocus, estimated weight, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br />
+<span class="in1">supposed habits, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Egg of &AElig;pyornis, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;<br />
+<span class="in1">Apteryx, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Ostrich, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Moa, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Eggs, casts of, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br />
+<br />
+Elephant, size, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
+<span class="in1">size of tusks, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Elephas ganesa, tusks, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
+<br />
+Encrustations, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br />
+<br />
+Extermination. See Extinction<br />
+<br />
+Extinction, ascribed to great convulsions, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br />
+<span class="in1">ascribed to primitive man, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Dinosaurs, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">local, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">by man, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Marine Reptiles, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">often unaccountable, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Pliocene rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">sometimes evolution, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Titanotheres, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Feathers, imprints of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
+<br />
+Fishes, abundance of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
+<span class="in1">armored, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">collections of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">killed by cold, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">killed by volcanoes, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Fish-crows, killed by cold, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum">[247]</span>
+Flesh does not petrify, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Flightless birds, absent from Tasmania, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br />
+<span class="in1">present distribution, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">relation between flightlessness and size, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Folds and frills, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+Footprints, collections of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a><br />
+<span class="in1">books on, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">See also under Tracks</span><br />
+<br />
+Fossil birds, rarity of, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br />
+<br />
+Fossil man, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Fossilization a slow process, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Fossils, conditions under which they are formed, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
+<span class="in1">collecting, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>-<a href="#Page_116">116</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">definition of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">deformation of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">impressions, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">not necessarily petrifactions, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">preparation of, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>-<a href="#Page_119">119</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">why they are not more common, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Fowls, muscles of, <a href="#Page_81">81</a><br />
+<br />
+Frill of Triceratops, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br />
+<br />
+Fur-seals killed by ice-floes, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gar pikes, destruction of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+Giant birds, reasons for distribution and flightlessness, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Giant Moa, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
+<span class="in1">leg compared with that of horse, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Giant Sloth, domesticated by man, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[248]</span>
+<span class="in1">struggle between, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Giant Sloth, tracks at Carson City, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<br />
+Gilfort, Robert, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
+<br />
+Great Auk, extermination of, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+Grouse on Scotch moors, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hawkins, B. W., restorations by, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+<br />
+Hesperornis, description of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<span class="in1">impressions of feathers, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">position of legs, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Hippotherium, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Hoactzin, habits of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>*<br />
+<br />
+Horn does not petrify, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
+<br />
+Horse, abundant in Pleistocene time, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br />
+<span class="in1">books on, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of bronze age, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">collections of fossil, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">development of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>,* <a href="#Page_175">175</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">differences between fossil and living, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">early domestication, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">evidence as to genealogy, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>-<a href="#Page_173">173</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">extra-toed, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">found in South America in <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Julius C&aelig;sar, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">none found wild in historic times, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">Pliocene, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">possibility of existence in America up to the time of its discovery, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[249]</span>
+<span class="in1">primitive, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Horse, sketched by primitive man, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth of, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">three-toed, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Humming-bird, exterminated by hurricane, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Hydrarchus, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>*<br />
+<br />
+Hyracotherium, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>,* <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ichthyosaurs, silhouettes of, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
+<br />
+Iguanodons, found at Bernissart, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+Impressions of feathers, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br />
+<span class="in1">of scales, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of skin, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Inbreeding, effects of, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+Information, sources of, xvi<br />
+<br />
+Innuits, habits, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+Interdependence of animals and plants, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Ivory, fossil, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Jaw of Mosasaur, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>*<br />
+<span class="in1">of reptiles, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Killing of the Mammoth, story, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+Kimmswick, deposit of Mastodon bones, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
+<br />
+Knight, Charles R., restorations by, xviii, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Koch's Hydrarchus, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>*<br />
+<span class="in1">Missourium, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>,* <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Leaves, impressions of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum">[250]</span>
+Leg of Brontornis, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>*<br />
+<br />
+Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>*<br />
+<span class="in1">of Giant Moa, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">position in Hesperornis, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">position in ducks, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Lenape Stone, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>*<br />
+<br />
+Life, earliest traces of, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br />
+<br />
+Lingula, antiquity of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<span class="in1">Professor Brooks on, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Loricaria, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>*<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Mammoth, adapted to a cold climate, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<span class="in1">Alaskan Live, Story, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">believed to live underground, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">bones taken for those of giants, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">contemporary with man, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">derivation of name, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">description, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">discovery of entire specimens, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">distribution, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">drawn by early man, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">entire specimens obtainable, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">reasons for extermination, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">killing of the, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">literature on, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">misconception as to size, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">mounted skeleton, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">not now living, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">preservation of remains, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">skeletons in Alaska, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[251]</span><br />
+Mammoth, in Chicago Academy of Sciences, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
+<span class="in1">at St. Petersburg, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">size, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">size of tusks, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth dredged in North Sea, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">tusks brought into market, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Man contemporary with Mammoth, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+<span class="in1">fossil, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Guadeloupe, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Manatees killed by cold, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Marsh, Prof. O. C., collection of fossil horses, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
+<span class="in1">on Dinosaurs, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">on toothed birds, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Mastodon, bones taken for those of giants, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<span class="in1">thought to be carnivorous, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">covering, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">description, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">distribution, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">extinction, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">literature, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">and man, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">first noticed in America, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">origin unknown, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">remains abundant, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">remains in Ulster and Orange counties, New York, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[252]</span><br />
+Mastodon, size, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<span class="in1">skeletons on exhibition, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">species, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>,* <a href="#Page_218">218</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">tusks, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Mesohippus, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Mimicry, not conscious, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+<br />
+Missourium of Koch, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>,* <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
+<br />
+Moas, collections of, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
+<span class="in1">contemporary with man, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">deductions from distribution, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">destruction of, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">discovery of bones, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">elephant-footed, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">feathers of, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">Giant, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">supposed food of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">legends of, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">literature, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">scientific names, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">size of, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">species of, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Moloch, an Australian lizard, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>*<br />
+<br />
+Mosasaurs, abundance of, in Kansas, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<span class="in1">books on, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">collections of, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">extinction of, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">first discovery, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">jaw of, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[253]</span><br />
+Mosasaurs, range of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">size of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Mylodon tracks at Carson City, <a href="#Page_45">45</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Names, scientific, reasons for using, xvi, xvii<br />
+<br />
+Nature, balance of, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Nuts, fossil, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Oldest animals, <a href="#Page_21">21</a><br />
+<span class="in1">vertebrates, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Ostrich egg, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br />
+<br />
+Over-specialization, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Peale, C. W., <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+Peale, Rembrandt, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+Pelican, mandible, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
+<br />
+Penguins, depend on fat for warmth, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<span class="in1">feathers highly modified, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">swim with wings, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Petrified bodies, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Phororhacos, description of, <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br />
+<span class="in1">mistaken for mammal, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">Patagonian bird, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">related to heron family, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration, frontispiece</span><br />
+<span class="in1">skull, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Protohippus, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="pagenum">[254]</span>
+Pteraspis, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
+<br />
+Pterichthys, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>*<br />
+<span class="in1">mistaken for crab, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Pterodactyls, impressions of wings, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
+<span class="in1">from Kansas, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">wing, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Pycraft, W. P., restoration of Arch&aelig;opteryx, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Radiolarians, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>*<br />
+<br />
+Reconstruction of animals, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Reptiles, fasting powers of, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br />
+<span class="in1">growth throughout life, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">jaws, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Restorations, xviii<br />
+<span class="in1">Arch&aelig;opteryx, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Ceratosaurus, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Hesperornis, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Mammoth, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Mastodon, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Phororhacos, frontispiece</span><br />
+<span class="in1">progress in, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">Stegosaurus, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Thespesius, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Triceratops, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">Tylosaurus, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Reversion of fancy stock, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+<br />
+Rhinoceros, exterminated by cold, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+Roc, legend of, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a><br />
+<br />
+Rocks, thickness of sedimentary, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Ruffles on dresses, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[255]</span><br />
+<br />
+Schuchert, Charles, on collecting fossils, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<span class="in1">collector of Zeuglodon bones, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Seals, covering of, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+<br />
+Sea-serpent, belief in, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
+<span class="in1">possibility of existence, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Shaler, Professor, on changes in Miocene flora of Europe, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br />
+<br />
+Sharks, early, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<span class="in1">Great-toothed, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">known from spines and teeth, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">Port Jackson, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth of, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">White, or Man-Eater, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Skeleton, basis of all restorations, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+<span class="in1">best testimony of animal's relationships, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">information to be derived from, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">a problem in mechanics, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">reconstruction of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">relation of, to exterior of animal, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Triceratops, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>,* <a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Spines and plates, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
+<br />
+Stegosaurus, description of, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration of, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Survival of the fittest, <a href="#Page_173">173</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Teeth, birds with, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br />
+<span class="in1">of gnawing animals, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of grass-eaters, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[256]</span><br />
+Teeth, of horse, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br />
+<span class="in1">of mammoth, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">of mastodon, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">of sharks, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Thespesius, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Thespesius, abundance of, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<span class="in1">brain of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">(Same as Claosaurus)</span><br />
+<span class="in1">engulfed in quicksand, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">impressions of skin, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">at Yale, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Tiger, preying on reindeer, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Tile-fish, destruction of, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br />
+<br />
+Titanichthys, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
+<br />
+Toothed birds, collections of, <a href="#Page_88">88</a><br />
+<span class="in1">discovery of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Townsend C. H., <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+Tracks, ascribed to birds, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<span class="in1">ascribed to giants, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">animals known from, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">collections of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Connecticut Valley, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">deductions from, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">of Dinosaurs, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>,* <a href="#Page_40">40</a>,* <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">discovery in England and America, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">how formed, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">at Hastings, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[257]</span><br />
+Tracks, of Mylodon, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br />
+<span class="in1">of worms, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Triceratops, brain, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<span class="in1">broken horn, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">description, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">restoration, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>*</span><br />
+<span class="in1">skeleton, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>*</span><br />
+<br />
+Tufa, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br />
+<br />
+Tukeman, killing of the Mammoth, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Variation in animals, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Vertebrates, oldest, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br />
+<br />
+Vestigial structures, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br />
+<br />
+Volcanic outbursts, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Webster, F. S., on destruction of gar pikes, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
+<br />
+White, C. A., on the nature and uses of fossils, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+White Shark, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
+<br />
+Wings, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>,* <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<span class="in1">of embryonic birds, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Wood, fossil, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Worm trails, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Yucca, fertilization, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Zeuglodon, abundance of remains, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
+<span class="in1">same as Basilosaurus</span><br />
+<span class="in1">description, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">habits, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></span><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[258]</span><br />
+Zeuglodon, Koch's restoration, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
+<span class="in1">name, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">once numerous, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">size, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">specimen of, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">structure of bones, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></span><br />
+<span class="in1">teeth, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>*</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Animals of the Past, by Frederic A. Lucas
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Animals of the Past, by Frederic A. Lucas
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Animals of the Past
+
+Author: Frederic A. Lucas
+
+Release Date: November 14, 2011 [EBook #38013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANIMALS OF THE PAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    ANIMALS OF THE PAST
+
+    [Illustration: Phororhacos, a Patagonian Giant of the Miocene.
+    _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+    _Science for Everybody_
+
+
+
+
+    ANIMALS OF THE PAST
+
+    BY FREDERIC A. LUCAS
+
+
+    _Curator of the Division of Comparative Anatomy,
+    United States National Museum_
+
+    FULLY ILLUSTRATED
+
+    NEW YORK
+    McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
+    1901
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY S. S. MCCLURE CO.
+    1901, BY MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
+
+    PUBLISHED NOVEMBER, 1901.
+
+
+
+
+    TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+    INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY
+
+    Use of scientific names, xvi; estimates of age of earth, xvii;
+    restorations by Mr. Knight, xviii; Works of Reference, xix.
+
+
+    I. FOSSILS, AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED
+
+    Definition of fossils, 1; fossils may be indications of animals
+    or plants, 2; casts and impressions, 3; why fossils are not more
+    abundant, 4; conditions under which fossils are formed, 5;
+    enemies of bones, 6; Dinosaurs engulfed in quicksand, 8;
+    formation of fossils, 9; petrified bodies frauds, 10; natural
+    casts, 10; leaves, 13; incrustations, 14; destruction of
+    fossils, 15; references, 17.
+
+
+    II. THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATES
+
+    Methods of interrogating Nature, 18; thickness of sedimentary
+    rocks, 20; earliest traces of life, 21; early vertebrates
+    difficult of preservation, 22; armored fishes, 23; abundance of
+    early fishes, 25; destruction of fish, 26; carboniferous sharks,
+    29; known mostly from teeth and spines, 30; references, 32.
+
+
+    III. IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST
+
+    Records of extinct animals, 33; earliest traces of animal life,
+    34; formation of tracks, 35; tracks in all strata, 36; discovery
+    of tracks, 37; tracks of Dinosaurs, 39; species named from
+    tracks, 41; footprints aid in determining attitude of animals,
+    43; tracks at Carson City, 45; references, 47.
+
+
+    IV. RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS
+
+    The Mosasaurs, 49; history of the first known Mosasaur, 50; jaws
+    of reptiles, 53; extinction of Mosasaurs, 55; the sea-serpent,
+    56; Zeuglodon, 58; its habits, 59; Koch's Hydrarchus, 61; bones
+    collected by Mr. Schuchert, 63; abundance of sharks, 64; the
+    great Carcharodon, 65; arrangement of sharks' teeth, 67;
+    references, 68.
+
+
+    V. BIRDS OF OLD
+
+    Earliest birds, 70; wings, 71; study of young animals, 73; the
+    curious Hoactzin, 74; first intimation of birds, 76;
+    Archaeopteryx, 77; birds with teeth, 78; cretaceous birds, 79;
+    Hesperornis, 80; loss of power of flight, 81; covering of
+    Hesperornis, 82; attitude of Hesperornis, 83; curious position
+    of legs, 84; toothed birds disappointing, 85; early development
+    of birds, 86; eggs of early birds, 87; references, 88.
+
+
+    VI. THE DINOSAURS
+
+    Discovery of Dinosaur remains, 90; nearest relatives of
+    Dinosaurs, 91; relation of birds to reptiles, 92; brain of
+    Dinosaurs, 93; parallel between Dinosaurs and Marsupials, 95;
+    the great Brontosaurus, 96; food of Dinosaurs, 97; habits of
+    Diplodocus, 99; the strange Australian Moloch, 100; combats of
+    Triceratops, 101; skeleton of Triceratops, 102; Thespesius and
+    his kin, 104; the carnivorous Ceratosaurus, 106; Stegosaurus,
+    the plated lizard, 106; preferences, 109.
+
+
+    VII. READING THE RIDDLES OF THE ROCKS
+
+    Fossils regarded as sports of nature, 111; qualifications of a
+    successful collector, 112; chances of collecting, 114;
+    excavation of fossils, 115; strengthening fossils for shipment,
+    117; great size of some specimens, 118; the preparation of
+    fossils, 119; mistakes of anatomists, 120; reconstruction of
+    Triceratops, 121; distinguishing characters of bones, 122; the
+    skeleton a problem in mechanics, 124; clothing the bones with
+    flesh, 127; the covering of animals, 127; outside ornamentation,
+    129; probabilities in the covering of animals, 130; impressions
+    of extinct animals, 131; mistaken inferences from bones of
+    Mammoth, 133; coloring of large land animals, 134; color
+    markings of young animals, 136; references, 137.
+
+
+    VIII. FEATHERED GIANTS
+
+    Legend of the Moa, 139; our knowledge of the Moas, 141; some
+    Moas wingless, 142; deposits of Moa bones, 143; legend of the
+    Roc, 144; discovery of AEpyornis, 145; large-sounding names, 146;
+    eggs of great birds, 147; the Patagonian Phororhacos, 149; the
+    huge Brontornis, 150; development of giant birds, 153;
+    distribution of flightless birds, 154; relation between
+    flightlessness and size, 156; references, 156.
+
+
+    IX. THE ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE
+
+    North America in the Eocene age, 160; appearance of early
+    horses, 163; early domestication of the horse, 165; the toes of
+    horses, 166; Miocene horses small, 167; evidence of genealogy of
+    the horse, 170; meaning of abnormalities, 170; changes in the
+    climate and animals of the West, 174; references, 176.
+
+
+    X. THE MAMMOTH
+
+    The story of the killing of the Mammoth, 177; derivation of the
+    word "mammoth," 178; mistaken ideas as to size of the Mammoth,
+    179; size of Mammoth and modern elephants, 180; finding of an
+    entire Mammoth, 182; birthplace of the Mammoth, 184; beliefs
+    concerning its bones, 185; the range of the animal, 186;
+    theories concerning the extinction of the Mammoth, 188; Man and
+    Mammoth, 189; origin of the Alaskan Live Mammoth Story, 190;
+    traits of the Innuits, 192; an entire Mammoth recently found,
+    194; references, 195.
+
+
+    XI. THE MASTODON
+
+    Differences between Mastodon and Mammoth, 198; affinities of the
+    Mastodon, 200; vestigial structures, 201; distribution of
+    American Mastodon, 203; first noticed in North America, 204;
+    thought to be carnivorous, 206; Koch's Missourium, 208; former
+    abundance of Mastodons, 209; appearance of the animal, 210; its
+    size, 211; was man contemporary with Mastodon? 213; the Lenape
+    stone, 215; legend of the big buffalo, 216; references, 218.
+
+
+    XII. WHY DO ANIMALS BECOME EXTINCT?
+
+    Extinction sometimes evolution, 221; over-specialization as a
+    cause for extinction, 222; extinction sometimes unaccountable,
+    223; man's capability for harm small in the past, 224; old
+    theories of great convulsions, 226; changes in nature slow, 227;
+    the case of Lingula, 228; local extermination, 229; the Moas and
+    the Great Auk, 232; the case of large animals, 233;
+    inter-dependence of living beings, 234; coyotes and fruit, 236;
+    Shaler on the Miocene flora of Europe, 236; man's desire for
+    knowledge, 238.
+
+    INDEX, 243
+
+
+
+
+NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+The original drawings, made especially for this book, are by Charles R.
+Knight and James M. Gleeson, under the direction of Mr. Knight. The fact
+that the originals of these drawings have been presented to and accepted
+by the United States National Museum is evidence of their scientific
+value. Mr. Knight has been commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution,
+the United States National Museum, and the New York Museum of Natural
+History, to do their most important pictures of extinct animals. He is
+the one modern artist who can picture prehistoric animals with artistic
+charm of presentation as well as with full scientific accuracy. In this
+instance, the author has personally superintended the artist's work, so
+that it is as correct in every respect as present knowledge makes
+possible. Of the minor illustrations, some are by Mr. Bruce Horsfall, an
+artist attached to the staff of the New York Museum of Natural History,
+and all have been drawn with the help of and under the author's
+supervision.
+
+
+
+
+    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    Fig.                                                            Page
+
+    Phororhacos, a Patagonian Giant of the Miocene _From a Drawing
+    by Charles R. Knight_                                 _Frontispiece_
+
+    1. Diplomystus, an Ancient Member of the Shad Family _From the
+    fish-bed at Green River, Wyoming. From a specimen in the United
+    States National Museum._                                           4
+
+    2. Bryozoa, from the Shore of the Devonian Sea that Covered
+    Eastern New York _From a specimen in Yale University Museum,
+    prepared by Dr. Beecher._                                         10
+
+    3. Skeleton of a Radiolarian Very Greatly Enlarged                17
+
+    4. Cephalaspis and Loricaria, an Ancient and a Modern Armored
+    Fish                                                              24
+
+    5. Pterichthys, the Wing Fish                                     32
+
+    6. Where a Dinosaur Sat Down                                      38
+
+    7. Footprints of Dinosaurs on the Brownstone of the Connecticut
+    Valley _From a slab in the museum of Amherst College._            40
+
+    8. The Track of a Three-toed Dinosaur                             47
+
+    9. A Great Sea Lizard, _Tylosaurus Dyspelor From a drawing by
+    J. M. Gleeson._                                                   52
+
+    10. Jaw of a Mosasaur, Showing the Joint that Increased the
+    Swallowing Capacity of that Reptile                               54
+
+    11. Koch's Hydrarchus. Composed of Portions of the Skeletons of
+    Several Zeuglodons                                                62
+
+    12. A Tooth of Zeuglodon, One of the "Yoke Teeth," from which it
+    derives the name                                                  69
+
+    13. Archaeopteryx, the Earliest Known Bird _From the specimen in
+    the Berlin Museum._                                               70
+
+    14. Nature's Four Methods of Making a Wing: Bat, Pteryodactyl,
+    Archaeopteryx, and Modern Bird                                     72
+
+    15. Young Hoactzins                                               75
+
+    16. Hesperornis, the Great Toothed Diver _From a drawing by J.
+    M. Gleeson._                                                      82
+
+    17. Archaeopteryx _As Restored by Mr. Pycraft._                    89
+
+    18. Thespesius, a Common Herbivorous Dinosaur of the Cretaceous
+    _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._                            90
+
+    19. A Hind Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, the Largest of the
+    Dinosaurs                                                         96
+
+    20. A Single Vertebra of Brontosaurus                             97
+
+    21. Moloch, a Modern Lizard that Surpasses the Stegosaurs in All
+    but Size _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._                      100
+
+    22. Skeleton of Triceratops                                      103
+
+    23. The Horned Ceratosaurus, a Carnivorous Dinosaur _From a
+    drawing by J. M. Gleeson._                                       106
+
+    24. Stegosaurus, an Armored Dinosaur of the Jurassic _From a
+    drawing by Charles R. Knight._                                   108
+
+    25. Skull of Ceratosaurus _From a specimen in the United States
+    National Museum._                                                110
+
+    26. Triceratops, He of the Three-horned Face _From a statuette
+    by Charles R. Knight._                                           126
+
+    27. A Hint of Buried Treasures                                   137
+
+    28. Relics of the Moa                                            140
+
+    29. Eggs of Feathered Giants, AEpyornis, Ostrich, Moa, Compared
+    with a Hen's Egg                                                 148
+
+    30. Skull of Phororhacos Compared with that of the Race-horse
+    Lexington                                                        151
+
+    31. Leg of a Horse Compared with that of the Giant Moa           152
+
+    32. The Three Giants, Phororhacos, Moa, Ostrich                  158
+
+    33. Skeleton of the Modern Horse and of His Eocene Ancestor      161
+
+    34. The Development of the Horse                                 168
+
+    35. The Mammoth _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._           176
+
+    36. Skeleton of the Mammoth in the Royal Museum of St.
+    Petersburg                                                       183
+
+    37. The Mammoth _As engraved by a Primitive Artist on a Piece of
+    Mammoth-Tusk._                                                   196
+
+    38. Tooth of Mastodon and of Mammoth                             199
+
+    39. The Missourium of Koch _From a Tracing of the Figure
+    Illustrating Koch's Description._                                207
+
+    40. The Mastodon _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._              210
+
+    41. The Lenape Stone, Reduced                                    219
+
+
+
+
+_INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY_
+
+
+_At the present time the interest in the ancient life of this earth is
+greater than ever before, and very considerable sums of money are being
+expended to dispatch carefully planned expeditions to various parts of
+the world systematically to gather the fossil remains of the animals of
+the past. That this interest is not merely confined to a few scientific
+men, but is shared by the general public, is shown by the numerous
+articles, including many telegrams, in the columns of the daily papers.
+The object of this book is to tell some of the interesting facts
+concerning a few of the better known or more remarkable of these extinct
+inhabitants of the ancient world; also, if possible, to ease the strain
+on these venerable animals, caused by stretching them so often beyond
+their due proportions._
+
+_The book is admittedly somewhat on the lines of Mr. Hutchinson's
+"Extinct Monsters" and "Creatures of Other Days," but it is hoped that
+it may be considered with books as with boats, a good plan to build
+after a good model. The information scattered through these pages has
+been derived from varied sources; some has of necessity been taken from
+standard books, a part has been gathered in the course of museum work
+and official correspondence; for much, the author is indebted to his
+personal friends, and for a part, he is under obligations to friends he
+has never met, who have kindly responded to his inquiries. The endeavor
+has been conscientiously made to exclude all misinformation; it is,
+nevertheless, entirely probable that some mistakes may have crept in,
+and due apology for these is hereby made beforehand._
+
+_The author expects to be taken to task for the use of scientific names,
+and the reader may perhaps sympathize with the old lady who said that
+the discovery of all these strange animals did not surprise her so much
+as the fact that anyone should know their names when they were found.
+The real trouble is that there are no common names for these animals.
+Then, too, people who call for easier names do not stop to reflect
+that, in many cases, the scientific names are no harder than others,
+simply less familiar, and, when domesticated, they cease to be hard:
+witness mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, boa constrictor, all of
+which are scientific names. And if, for example, we were to call the
+Hyracotherium a Hyrax beast it would not be a name, but a description,
+and not a bit more intelligible._
+
+_Again, it is impossible to indicate the period at which these creatures
+lived without using the scientific term for it--Jurassic, Eocene,
+Pliocene, as the case may be--because there is no other way of doing
+it._
+
+_Some readers will doubtless feel disappointed because they are not told
+how many years ago these animals lived. The question is often asked--How
+long ago did this or that animal live? But when the least estimate puts
+the age of the earth at only 10,000,000 years, while the longest makes
+it 6,000,000,000, it does seem as if it were hardly worth while to name
+any figures. Even when we get well toward the present period we find the
+time that has elapsed since the beginning of the Jurassic, when the
+Dinosaurs held carnival, variously put at from 15,000,000 to 6,000,000
+years; while from the beginning of the Eocene, when the mammals began to
+gain the supremacy, until now, the figures vary from 3,000,000 to
+5,000,000 years. So the question of age will be left for the reader to
+settle to his or her satisfaction._
+
+_The restorations of extinct animals may be considered as giving as
+accurate representations of these creatures as it is possible to make;
+they were either drawn by Mr. Knight, whose name is guarantee that they
+are of the highest quality, or by Mr. Gleeson, with the aid of Mr.
+Knight's criticism. That they are infallibly correct is out of the
+question; for, as Dr. Woodward writes in the preface to "Extinct
+Monsters," "restorations are ever liable to emendation, and the present
+... will certainly prove no exception to the rule." As a striking
+instance of this, it was found necessary at the last moment to change
+the figure of Hesperornis, the original life-like portrait proving to be
+incorrect in attitude, a fact that would have long escaped detection but
+for the Pan-American Exposition. The connection between the two is
+explained on page 76. However, the reader may rest assured that these
+restorations are infinitely more nearly correct than many figures of
+living animals that have appeared within the last twenty-five years, and
+are even now doing duty._
+
+_The endeavor has been made to indicate, at the end of each chapter, the
+museums in which the best examples of the animals described may be seen,
+and also some book or article in which further information may be
+obtained. As this book is intended for the general reader, references to
+purely technical articles have, so far as possible, been avoided, and
+none in foreign languages mentioned._
+
+_For important works of reference on the subject of paleontology, the
+reader may consult "A Manual of Paleontology," by Alleyne Nicholson and
+R. Lydekker, a work in two volumes dealing with invertebrates,
+vertebrates, and plants, or "A Text-Book of Paleontology," by Karl von
+Zittel, English edition, only the first volume of which has so far been
+published. An admirable book on the vertebrates is "Outlines of
+Vertebrate Paleontology," by Arthur Smith Woodward. It is to be
+understood that these are not at all "popular" in their scope, but
+intended for students who are already well advanced in the study of
+zooelogy._
+
+
+
+
+ANIMALS OF THE PAST I
+
+FOSSILS, AND HOW THEY ARE FORMED
+
+    "_How of a thousand snakes each one
+    Was changed into a coil of stone._"
+
+
+Fossils are the remains, or even the indications, of animals and plants
+that have, through natural agencies, been buried in the earth and
+preserved for long periods of time. This may seem a rather meagre
+definition, but it is a difficult matter to frame one that will be at
+once brief, exact, and comprehensive; fossils are not necessarily the
+remains of extinct animals or plants, neither are they, of necessity,
+objects that have become petrified or turned into stone.
+
+Bones of the Great Auk and Rytina, which are quite extinct, would hardly
+be considered as fossils; while the bones of many species of animals,
+still living, would properly come in that category, having long ago been
+buried by natural causes and often been changed into stone. And yet it
+is not essential for a specimen to have had its animal matter replaced
+by some mineral in order that it may be classed as a fossil, for the
+Siberian Mammoths, found entombed in ice, are very properly spoken of as
+fossils, although the flesh of at least one of these animals was so
+fresh that it was eaten. Likewise the mammoth tusks brought to market
+are termed fossil-ivory, although differing but little from the tusks of
+modern elephants.
+
+Many fossils indeed merit their popular appellation of petrifactions,
+because they have been changed into stone by the slow removal of the
+animal or vegetable matter present and its replacement by some mineral,
+usually silica or some form of lime. But it is necessary to include
+'indications of plants or animals' in the above definition because some
+of the best fossils may be merely impressions of plants or animals and
+no portion of the objects themselves, and yet, as we shall see, some of
+our most important information has been gathered from these same
+imprints.
+
+Nearly all our knowledge of the plants that flourished in the past is
+based on the impressions of their leaves left on the soft mud or smooth
+sand that later on hardened into enduring stone. Such, too, are the
+trails of creeping and crawling things, casts of the burrows of worms
+and the many footprints of the reptiles, great and small, that crept
+along the shore or stalked beside the waters of the ancient seas. The
+creatures themselves have passed away, their massive bones even are
+lost, but the prints of their feet are as plain to-day as when they were
+first made.
+
+Many a crustacean, too, is known solely or mostly by the cast of its
+shell, the hard parts having completely vanished, and the existence of
+birds in some formations is revealed merely by the casts of their eggs;
+and these natural casts must be included in the category of fossils.
+
+Impressions of vertebrates may, indeed, be almost as good as actual
+skeletons, as in the case of some fishes, where the fine mud in which
+they were buried has become changed to a rock, rivalling porcelain in
+texture; the bones have either dissolved away or shattered into dust at
+the splitting of the rock, but the imprint of each little fin-ray and
+every threadlike bone is as clearly defined as it would have been in a
+freshly prepared skeleton. So fine, indeed, may have been the mud, and
+so quiet for the time being the waters of the ancient sea or lake, that
+not only have prints of bones and leaves been found, but those of
+feathers and of the skin of some reptiles, and even of such soft and
+delicate objects as jelly fishes. But for these we should have little
+positive knowledge of the outward appearance of the creatures of the
+past, and to them we are occasionally indebted for the solution of some
+moot point in their anatomy.
+
+The reader may possibly wonder why it is that fossils are not more
+abundant; why, of the vast majority of animals that have dwelt upon the
+earth since it became fit for the habitation of living beings, not a
+trace remains. This, too, when some objects--the tusks of the Mammoth,
+for example--have been sufficiently well preserved to form staple
+articles of commerce at the present time, so that the carved handle of
+my lady's parasol may have formed part of some animal that flourished at
+the very dawn of the human race, and been gazed upon by her
+grandfather a thousand times removed. The answer to this query is that,
+unless the conditions were such as to preserve at least the hard parts
+of any creature from immediate decay, there was small probability of its
+becoming fossilized. These conditions are that the objects must be
+protected from the air, and, practically, the only way that this happens
+in nature is by having them covered with water, or at least buried in
+wet ground.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Diplomystus, an Ancient Member of the Shad
+Family. From the Fishbed at Green River, Wyoming. _From a specimen in
+the United States National Museum._]
+
+If an animal dies on dry land, where its bones lie exposed to the
+summer's sun and rain and the winter's frost and snow, it does not take
+these destructive agencies long to reduce the bones to powder; in the
+rare event of a climate devoid of rain, mere changes of temperature, by
+producing expansion and contraction, will sooner or later cause a bone
+to crack and crumble.
+
+Usually, too, the work of the elements is aided by that of animals and
+plants. Every one has seen a dog make way with a pretty good-sized bone,
+and the Hyena has still greater capabilities in that line; and ever
+since vertebrate life began there have been carnivorous animals of some
+kind to play the role of bone-destroyers. Even were there no carnivores,
+there were probably then, as now, rats and mice a-plenty, and few
+suspect the havoc small rodents may play with a bone for the grease it
+contains, or merely for the sake of exercising their teeth. Now and then
+we come upon a fossil bone, long since turned into stone, on which are
+the marks of the little cutting teeth of field mice, put there long,
+long ago, and yet looking as fresh as if made only last week. These
+little beasts, however, are indirect rather than direct agents in the
+destruction of bones by gnawing off the outer layers, and thus
+permitting the more ready entrance of air and water. Plants, as a rule,
+begin their work after an object has become partly or entirely buried in
+the soil, when the tiny rootlets find their way into fissures, and,
+expanding as they grow, act like so many little wedges to force it
+asunder.
+
+Thus on dry land there is small opportunity for a bone to become a
+fossil; but, if a creature so perishes that its body is swept into the
+ocean or one of its estuaries, settles to the muddy bottom of a lake or
+is caught on the sandy shoals of some river, the chances are good that
+its bones will be preserved. They are poorest in the ocean, for unless
+the body drifts far out and settles down in quiet waters, the waves
+pound the bones to pieces with stones or scour them away with sand,
+while marine worms may pierce them with burrows, or echinoderms cut
+holes for their habitations; there are more enemies to a bone than one
+might imagine.
+
+Suppose, however, that some animal has sunk in the depths of a quiet
+lake, where the wash of the waves upon the shore wears the sand or rock
+into mud so fine that it floats out into still water and settles there
+as gently as dew upon the grass. Little by little the bones are covered
+by a deposit that fills every groove and pore, preserving the mark of
+every ridge and furrow; and while this may take long, it is merely a
+matter of time and favorable circumstance to bury the bones as deeply as
+one might wish. Scarce a reader of these lines but at some time has cast
+anchor in some quiet pond and pulled it up, thickly covered with sticky
+mud, whose existence would hardly be suspected from the sparkling waters
+and pebbly shores. If, instead of a lake, our animal had gone to the
+bottom of some estuary into which poured a river turbid with mud, the
+process of entombment would have been still more rapid, while, had the
+creature been engulfed in quicksand, it would have been the quickest
+method of all; and just such accidents did take place in the early days
+of the earth as well as now. At least two examples of the great Dinosaur
+Thespesius have been found with the bones all in place, the thigh bones
+still in their sockets and the ossified tendons running along the
+backbone as they did in life. This would hardly have happened had not
+the body been surrounded and supported so that every part was held in
+place and not crushed, and it is difficult to see any better agency for
+this than burial in quicksand.
+
+If such an event as we have been supposing took place in a part of the
+globe where the land was gradually sinking--and the crust of the earth
+is ever rising and falling--the mud and sand would keep on accumulating
+until an enormously thick layer was formed. The lime or silica contained
+in the water would tend to cement the particles of mud and grains of
+sand into a solid mass, while the process would be aided by the pressure
+of the overlying sediment, the heat created by this pressure, and that
+derived from the earth beneath. During this process the animal matter of
+bones or other objects would disappear and its place be taken by lime or
+silica, and thus would be formed a layer of rock containing fossils. The
+exact manner in which this replacement is effected and in which the
+chemical and mechanical changes occur is very far from being definitely
+known--especially as the process of "fossilization" must at times have
+been very complicated.
+
+In the case of fossil wood greater changes have taken place than in the
+fossilization of bone, for there is not merely an infiltration of the
+specimen but a complete replacement of the original vegetable by mineral
+matter, the interior of the cells being first filled with silica and
+their walls replaced later on. So completely and minutely may this
+change occur that under the microscope the very cellular structure of
+the wood is visible, and as this varies according to the species, it is
+possible, by microscopical examination, to determine the relationship of
+trees in cases where nothing but fragments of the trunk remain.
+
+The process of fossilization is at best a slow one, and soft substances
+such as flesh, or even horn, decay too rapidly for it to take place, so
+that all accounts of petrified bodies, human or otherwise, are either
+based on deliberate frauds or are the result of a very erroneous
+misinterpretation of facts. That the impression or cast of a body
+_might_ be formed in nature, somewhat as casts have been made of those
+who perished at Pompeii, is true; but, so far, no authentic case of the
+kind has come to light, and the reader is quite justified in
+disbelieving any report of "a petrified man."
+
+Natural casts of such hard bodies as shells are common, formed by the
+dissolving away of the original shell after it had become enclosed in
+mud, or even after this had changed to stone, and the filling up of this
+space by the filtering in of water charged with lime or silica, which
+is there deposited, often in crystalline form. In this way, too, are
+formed casts of eggs of reptiles and birds, so perfect that it is
+possible to form a pretty accurate opinion as to the group to which they
+belong.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Bryozoa from the Shore of the Devonian Sea that
+Covered Eastern New York. _From a specimen in Yale University Museum,
+prepared by Dr. Beecher._]
+
+Sometimes it happens that shells or other small objects imbedded in
+limestone have been dissolved and replaced by silica, and in such cases
+it is possible to eat away the enveloping rock with acid and leave the
+silicified casts. By this method specimens of shells, corals, and
+bryozoans are obtained of almost lace-like delicacy, and as perfect as
+if only yesterday gathered at the sea-shore. Casts of the interior of
+shells, showing many details of structure, are common, and anyone who
+has seen clams dug will understand how they are formed by the entrance
+of mud into the empty shell.
+
+Casts of the kernels of nuts are formed in much the same way, and
+Professor E. H. Barbour has thus described the probable manner in which
+this was done. When the nuts were dropped into the water of the ancient
+lake the kernel rotted away, but the shell, being tough and hard, would
+probably last for years under favorable circumstances. Throughout the
+marls and clays of the Bad Lands (of South Dakota) there is a large
+amount of potash. This is dissolved by water, and then acts upon quartz,
+carrying it away in solution. This would find its way by infiltration
+into the interior of the nut. At the same time with this process,
+carrying lime carbonate in solution was going on, so that doubtless the
+stone kernels, consisting of pretty nearly equal parts of lime and
+silica, were deposited within the nuts. These kernels, of course, became
+hard and flinty in time, and capable of resisting almost any amount of
+weathering. Not so the organic shell; this eventually would decay away,
+and so leave the filling or kernel of chalcedony and lime.[1]
+
+[1] _Right here is the weak spot in Professor Barbour's explanation, and
+an illustration of our lack of knowledge. For it is difficult to see why
+the more enduring husk should not have become mineralized equally with
+the cavity within._
+
+"Fossil leaves" are nothing but fine casts, made in natural moulds, and
+all have seen the first stages in their formation as they watched the
+leaves sailing to the ground to be covered by mud or sand at the next
+rain, or dropping into the water, where sooner or later they sink, as we
+may see them at the bottom of any quiet woodland spring.
+
+Impressions of leaves are among the early examples of color-printing,
+for they are frequently of a darker, or even different, tint from that
+of the surrounding rock, this being caused by the carbonization of
+vegetable matter or to its action on iron that may have been present in
+the soil or water. Besides complete mineralization, or petrifaction,
+there are numerous cases of incomplete or semi-fossilization, where
+modern objects, still retaining their phosphate of lime and some animal
+matter even, are found buried in rock. This takes place when water
+containing carbonate of lime, silica, or sometimes iron, flows over beds
+of sand, cementing the grains into solid but not dense rock, and at the
+same time penetrating and uniting with it such things as chance to be
+buried. In this way was formed the "fossil man" of Guadeloupe, West
+Indies, a skeleton of a modern Carib lying in recent concretionary
+limestone, together with shells of existing species and fragments of
+pottery. In a similar way, too, human remains in parts of Florida have,
+through the infiltration of water charged with iron, become partially
+converted into limonite iron ore; and yet we know that these bones have
+been buried within quite recent times.
+
+Sometimes we hear of springs or waters that "turn things into stone,"
+but these tales are quite incorrect. Waters there are, like the
+celebrated hot springs of Auvergne, France, containing so much carbonate
+of lime in solution that it is readily deposited on objects placed
+therein, coating them more or less thickly, according to the length of
+time they are allowed to remain. This, however, is merely an
+encrustation, not extending into the objects. In a similar way the
+precipitation of solid material from waters of this description forms
+the porous rock known as tufa, and this often encloses moss, twigs, and
+other substances that are in no way to be classed with fossils.
+
+But some streams, flowing over limestone rocks, take up considerable
+carbonate of lime, and this may be deposited in water-soaked logs,
+replacing more or less of the woody tissue and thus really partially
+changing the wood into stone.
+
+The very rocks themselves may consist largely of fossils; chalk, for
+example, is mainly made up of the disintegrated shells of simple marine
+animals called foraminifers, and the beautiful flint-like "skeletons" of
+other small creatures termed radiolarians, minute as they are, have
+contributed extensively to the formation of some strata.
+
+Even after an object has become fossilized, it is far from certain that
+it will remain in good condition until found, while the chance of its
+being found at all is exceedingly small. When we remember that it is
+only here and there that nature has made the contents of the rocks
+accessible by turning the strata on edge, heaving them into cliffs or
+furrowing them with valleys and canyons, we realize what a vast number
+of pages of the fossil record must remain not only unread, but unseen.
+The wonder is, not that we know so little of the history of the past,
+but that we have learned so much, for not only is nature careless in
+keeping the records--preserving them mostly in scattered fragments--but
+after they have been laid away and sealed up in the rocks they are
+subject to many accidents. Some specimens get badly flattened by the
+weight of subsequently deposited strata, others are cracked and twisted
+by the movements of the rocks during periods of upheaval or subsidence,
+and when at last they are brought to the surface, the same sun and rain,
+snow and frost, from which they once escaped, are ready to renew the
+attack and crumble even the hard stone to fragments. Such, very briefly,
+are some of the methods by which fossils may be formed, such are some of
+the accidents by which they may be destroyed; but this description must
+be taken as a mere outline and as applying mainly to vertebrates, or
+backboned animals, since it is with them that we shall have to deal. It
+may, however, show why it is that fossils are not more plentiful, why we
+have mere hints of the existence of many animals, and why myriads of
+creatures may have flourished and passed away without so much as leaving
+a trace of their presence behind.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_A very valuable and interesting article by Dr. Charles A. White,
+entitled "The Relation of Biology to Geological Investigation," will be
+found in the Report of the United States National Museum for 1892. This
+comprises a series of essays on the nature and scientific uses of fossil
+remains, their origin, relative chronological value and other questions
+pertaining to them. The United States National Museum has published a
+pamphlet, part K, Bulletin 39, containing directions for collecting and
+preparing fossils, by Charles Schuchert; and another, part B, Bulletin
+39, collecting recent and fossil plants, by F. H. Knowlton._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Skeleton of a Radiolarian Very Greatly
+Enlarged.]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE EARLIEST KNOWN VERTEBRATES
+
+    "_We are the ancients of the earth
+    And in the morning of the times._"
+
+
+There is a universal, and perfectly natural, desire for information,
+which in ourselves we term thirst for knowledge and in others call
+curiosity, that makes mankind desire to know how everything began and
+causes much speculation as to how it all will end. This may take the
+form of a wish to know how a millionaire made his first ten cents, or it
+may lead to the questions--What is the oldest animal? or, What is the
+first known member of the great group of backboned animals at whose head
+man has placed himself? and, What did this, our primeval and
+many-times-removed ancestor, look like? The question is one that has
+ever been full of interest for naturalists, and Nature has been
+interrogated in various ways in the hope that she might be persuaded to
+yield a satisfactory answer. The most direct way has been that of
+tracing back the history of animal life by means of fossil remains, but
+beyond a certain point this method cannot go, since, for reasons stated
+in various places in these pages, the soft bodies of primitive animals
+are not preserved. To supplement this work, the embryologist has studied
+the early stages of animals, as their development throws a side-light on
+their past history. And, finally, there is the study of the varied forms
+of invertebrates, some of which have proved to be like vertebrates in
+part of their structure, while others have been revealed as vertebrates
+in disguise. So far these various methods have yielded various answers,
+or the replies, like those of the Delphic Oracle, have been variously
+interpreted so that vertebrates are considered by some to have descended
+from the worms, while others have found their beginnings in some animal
+allied to the King Crab.
+
+Every student of genealogy knows only too well how difficult a matter it
+is to trace a family pedigree back a few centuries, how soon the family
+names become changed, the line of descent obscure, and how soon gaps
+appear whose filling in requires much patient research. How much more
+difficult must it be, then, to trace the pedigree of a race that
+extends, not over centuries, but thousands of centuries; how wide must
+be some of the gaps, how very different may the founders of the family
+be from their descendants! The words old and ancient that we use so
+often in speaking of fossils appeal to us somewhat vaguely, for we speak
+of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, and call a family old
+that can show a pedigree running back four or five hundred years, when
+such as these are but affairs of yesterday compared with even recent
+fossils.
+
+Perhaps we may better appreciate the meaning of these words by recalling
+that, since the dawn of vertebrate life, sufficient of the earth's
+surface has been worn away and washed into the sea to form, were the
+strata piled directly one upon the other, fifteen or twenty miles of
+rock. This, of course, is the sum total of sedimentary rocks, for such a
+thickness as this is not to be found at any one locality; because,
+during the various ups and downs that this world of ours has met with,
+those portions that chanced to be out of water would receive no deposit
+of mud or sand, and hence bear no corresponding stratum of rock. The
+reader may think that there is a great deal of difference between
+fifteen and twenty miles, but this liberal margin is due to the
+difficulty of measuring the thickness of the rocks, and in Europe the
+sum of the measurable strata is much greater than in North America.
+
+The earliest traces of animal life are found deeper still, beneath
+something like eighteen to twenty-five miles of rock, while below this
+level are the strata in which dwelt the earliest living things,
+organisms so small and simple that no trace of their existence has been
+left, and we infer that they were there because any given group starts
+in a modest way with small and simple individuals.
+
+At the bottom, then, of twenty miles of rocks the seeker for the
+progenitor of the great family of backboned animals finds the scant
+remains of fish-like animals that the cautious naturalist, who is much
+given to "hedging," terms, not vertebrates, but prevertebrates or the
+forerunners of backboned animals. The earliest of these consist of small
+bony plates, and traces of a cartilaginous backbone from the Lower
+Silurian of Colorado, believed to represent relatives of Chimaera and
+species related to those better-known forms Holoptychius and Osteolepis,
+which occur in higher strata. There are certainly indications of
+vertebrate life, but the remains are so imperfect that little more can
+be said regarding them, and this is also true of the small conical teeth
+which occur in the Lower Silurian of St. Petersburg, and are thought to
+be the teeth of some animal like the lamprey.
+
+A little higher up in the rocks, though not in the scale of life, in the
+Lower Old Red Sandstone of England, are found more numerous and better
+preserved specimens of another little fish-like creature, rarely if ever
+exceeding two inches in length, and also related (probably) to the
+hag-fishes and lampreys that live to-day.
+
+These early vertebrates are not only small, but they were cartilaginous,
+so that it was essential for their preservation that they should be
+buried in soft mud as soon as possible after death. Even if this took
+place they were later on submitted to the pressure of some miles of
+overlying rock until, in some cases, their remains have been pressed out
+thinner than a sheet of paper, and so thoroughly incorporated into the
+surrounding stone that it is no easy matter to trace their shadowy
+outlines. With such drawbacks as these to contend with, it can scarcely
+be wondered at that, while some naturalists believe these little
+creatures to be related to the lamprey, others consider that they belong
+to a perfectly distinct group of animals, and others still think it
+possible that they may be the larval or early stages of larger and
+better-developed forms.
+
+Still higher up we come upon the abundant remains of numerous small
+fish-like animals, more or less completely clad in bony armor,
+indicating that they lived in troublous times when there was literally a
+fight for existence and only such as were well armed or well protected
+could hope to survive. A parallel case exists to-day in some of the
+rivers of South America, where the little cat-fishes would possibly be
+eaten out of existence but for the fact that they are covered--some of
+them very completely--with plate-armor that enables them to defy their
+enemies, or renders them such poor eating as not to be worth the taking.
+The arrangement of the plates or scales in the living Loricaria is very
+suggestive of the series of bony rings covering the body of the ancient
+Cephalaspis, only the latter, so far as we know, had no side-fins; but
+the creatures are in no wise related, and the similarity is in
+appearance only.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Cephalaspis and Loricaria, an Ancient and a
+Modern Armored Fish.]
+
+Pterichthys, the wing fish, was another small, quaint, armor-clad
+creature, whose fossilized remains were taken for those of a crab, and
+once described as belonging to a beetle. Certainly the buckler of this
+fish, which is the part most often preserved, with its jointed, bony
+arms, looks to the untrained eye far more like some strange crustacean
+than a fish, and even naturalists have pictured the animal as crawling
+over the bare sands by means of those same arms. These fishes and their
+allies were once the dominant type of life, and must have abounded in
+favored localities, for in places are great deposits of their protective
+shields jumbled together in a confused mass, and, save that they have
+hardened into stone, lying just as they were washed up on the ancient
+beach ages ago. How abundant they were may be gathered from the fact
+that it is believed their bodies helped consolidate portions of the
+strata of the English Old Red Sandstone. Says Mr. Hutchinson, speaking
+of the Caithness Flagstones, "They owe their peculiar tenacity and
+durability to the dead fishes that rotted in their midst while yet they
+were only soft mud. For just as a plaster cast boiled in oil becomes
+thereby denser and more durable, so the oily and other matter coming
+from decomposing fish operated on the surrounding sand or mud so as to
+make it more compact."
+
+It may not be easy to explain how it came to pass that fishes dwelling
+in salt water, as these undoubtedly did, were thus deposited in great
+numbers, but we may now and then see how deposits of fresh-water fishes
+may have been formed. When rivers flowing through a stretch of level
+country are swollen during the spring floods, they overflow their banks,
+often carrying along large numbers of fishes. As the water subsides
+these may be caught in shallow pools that soon dry up, leaving the
+fishes to perish, and every year the Illinois game association rescues
+from the "back waters" quantities of bass that would otherwise be lost.
+Mr. F. S. Webster has recorded an instance that came under his
+observation in Texas, where thousands of gar pikes, trapped in a lake
+formed by an overflow of the Rio Grande, had been, by the drying up of
+this lake, penned into a pool about seventy-five feet long by
+twenty-five feet wide. The fish were literally packed together like
+sardines, layer upon layer, and a shot fired into the pool would set the
+entire mass in motion, the larger gars as they dashed about casting the
+smaller fry into the air, a score at a time. Mr. Webster estimates that
+there must have been not less than 700 or 800 fish in the pool, from a
+foot and a half up to seven feet in length, every one of which perished
+a little later. In addition to the fish in the pond, hundreds of those
+that had died previously lay about in every direction, and one can
+readily imagine what a fish-bed this would have made had the occurrence
+taken place in the past.
+
+From the better-preserved specimens that do now and then turn up, we are
+able to obtain a very exact idea of the construction of the bony cuirass
+by which Pterichthys and its American cousin were protected, and to make
+a pretty accurate reconstruction of the entire animal. These primitive
+fishes had mouths, for eating is a necessity; but these mouths were not
+associated with true jaws, for the two do not, as might be supposed,
+necessarily go together. Neither did these animals possess hard
+backbones, and, while Pterichthys and its relatives had arms or fins,
+the hard parts of these were not on the inside but on the outside, so
+that the limb was more like the leg of a crab than the fin of a fish;
+and this is among the reasons why some naturalists have been led to
+conclude that vertebrates may have developed from crustaceans.
+Pteraspis, another of these little armored prevertebrates, had a less
+complicated covering, and looked very much like a small fish with its
+fore parts caught in an elongate clam-shell.
+
+The fishes that we have so far been considering--orphans of the past
+they might be termed, as they have no living relatives--were little
+fellows; but their immediate successors, preserved in the Devonian
+strata, particularly of North America, were the giants of those days,
+termed, from their size and presumably fierce appearance, Titantichthys
+and Dinichthys, and are related to a fish, _Ceratodus_, still living in
+Australia.
+
+We know practically nothing of the external appearance of these fishes,
+great and fierce though they may have been, with powerful jaws and
+armored heads, for they had no bony skeleton--as if they devoted their
+energies to preying upon their neighbors rather than to internal
+improvements. They attained a length of ten to eighteen feet, with a
+gape, in the large species called Titanichthys, of four feet, and such a
+fish might well be capable of devouring anything known to have lived at
+that early date.
+
+Succeeding these, in Carboniferous times, came a host of shark-like
+creatures known mainly from their teeth and spines, for their skeletons
+were of cartilage, and belonging to types that have mostly perished,
+giving place to others better adapted to the changed conditions wrought
+by time. Almost the only living relative of these early fishes is a
+little shark, known as the Port Jackson Shark, living in Australian
+waters. Like the old sharks, this one has a spine in front of his back
+fins, and, like them, he fortunately has a mouthful of diversely shaped
+teeth; fortunately, because through their aid we are enabled to form
+some idea of the manner in which some of the teeth found scattered
+through the rocks were arranged. For the teeth were not planted in
+sockets, as they are in higher animals, but simply rested on the jaws,
+from which they readily became detached when decomposition set in after
+death. To complicate matters, the teeth in different parts of the jaws
+were often so unlike one another that when found separately they would
+hardly be suspected of having belonged to the same animal. Besides teeth
+these fishes, for purposes of offence and defence, were usually armed
+with spines, sometimes of considerable size and strength, and often
+elaborately grooved and sculptured. As the soft parts perished the teeth
+and spines were left to be scattered by waves and currents, a tooth
+here, another there, and a spine somewhere else; so it has often
+happened that, being found separately, two or three quite different
+names have been given to one and the same animal. Now and then some
+specimen comes to light that escaped the thousand and one accidents to
+which such things were exposed, and that not only shows the teeth and
+spines but the faint imprint of the body and fins as well. And from such
+rare examples we learn just what teeth and spines go with one another,
+and sometimes find that one fish has received names enough for an entire
+school.
+
+These ancient sharks were not the large and powerful fishes that we have
+to-day--these came upon the scene later--but mostly fishes of small
+size, and, as indicated by their spines, fitted quite as much for
+defence as offence. Their rise was rapid, and in their turn they became
+the masters of the world, spreading in great numbers through the waters
+that covered the face of the earth; but their supremacy was of short
+duration, for they declined in numbers even during the Carboniferous
+Period, and later dwindled almost to extinction. And while sharks again
+increased, they never reached their former abundance, and the species
+that arose were swift, predatory forms, better fitted for the struggle
+for existence.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The early fishes make but little show in a museum, both on account of
+their small size and the conditions under which they have been
+preserved. The Museum of Comparative Zooelogy has a large collection of
+these ancient vertebrates, and there is a considerable number of fine
+teeth and spines of Carboniferous sharks in the United States National
+Museum._
+
+_Hugh Miller's "The Old Red Sandstone" contains some charming
+descriptions of his discoveries of Pterichthys and related forms, and
+this book will ever remain a classic._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Pterichthys, the Wing Fish.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IMPRESSIONS OF THE PAST
+
+    "_The weird palimpsest, old and vast,
+    Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past._"
+
+
+The Rev. H. N. Hutchinson commences one of his interesting books with
+Emerson's saying, "that Everything in nature is engaged in writing its
+own history;" and, as this remark cannot be improved on, it may well
+stand at the head of a chapter dealing with the footprints that the
+creatures of yore left on the sands of the sea-shore, the mud of a
+long-vanished lake bottom, or the shrunken bed of some water-course. Not
+only have creatures that walked left a record of their progress, but the
+worms that burrowed in the sand, the shell-fish that trailed over the
+mud when the tide was low, the stranded crab as he scuttled back to the
+sea--each and all left some mark to tell of their former presence. Even
+the rain that fell and the very wind that blew sometimes recorded the
+direction whence they came, and we may read in the rocks, also, accounts
+of freshets sweeping down with turbid waters, and of long periods of
+drouth, when the land was parched and lakes and rivers shrank beneath
+the burning sun.
+
+All these things have been told and retold; but, as there are many who
+have not read Mr. Hutchinson's books and to whom Buckland is quite
+unknown, it may be excusable to add something to what has already been
+said in the first chapter of these impressions of the past.
+
+The very earliest suggestion we have of the presence of animal life upon
+this globe is in the form of certain long dark streaks below the
+Cambrian of England, considered to be traces of the burrows of worms
+that were filled with fine mud, and while this interpretation may be
+wrong there is, on the other hand, no reason why it may not be correct.
+Plant and animal life must have had very lowly beginnings, and it is not
+at all probable that we shall find any trace of the simple and minute
+forms with which they started,[2] though we should not be surprised at
+finding hints of the presence of living creatures below the strata in
+which their remains are actually known to occur.
+
+[2] _Within the last few years what are believed to be indications of
+bacteria have been described from carboniferous rocks. Naturally such
+announcements must be accepted with great caution, for while there is no
+reason why this may not be true, it is much more probable that definite
+evidence of the effects of bacteria on plants should be found than that
+these simple, single-celled organisms should themselves have been
+detected._
+
+Worm burrows, to be sure, are hardly footprints, but tracks are found in
+Cambrian rocks just above the strata in which the supposed burrows
+occur, and from that time onward there are tracks a-plenty, for they
+have been made, wherever the conditions were favorable, ever since
+animals began to walk. All that was needed was a medium in which
+impressions could be made and so filled that there was imperfect
+adhesion between mould and matrix. Thus we find them formed not only by
+the sea-shore, in sands alternately dry and covered, but by the
+river-side, in shallow water, or even on land where tracks might be left
+in soft or moist earth into which wind-driven dust or sand might lodge,
+or sand or mud be swept by the mimic flood caused by a thunder shower.
+
+So there are tracks in strata of every age; at first those of
+invertebrates: after the worm burrows the curious complicated trails of
+animals believed to be akin to the king crab; broad, ribbed, ribbon-like
+paths ascribed to trilobites; then faint scratches of insects, and the
+shallow, palmed prints of salamanders, and the occasional slender sprawl
+of a lizard; then footprints, big and little, of the horde of Dinosaurs
+and, finally, miles above the Cambrian, marks of mammals. Sometimes,
+like the tracks of salamanders and reptiles in the carboniferous rocks
+of Pennsylvania and Kansas, these are all we have to tell of the
+existence of air-breathing animals. Again, as with the iguanodon, the
+foot to fit the track may be found in the same layer of rock, but this
+is not often the case.
+
+Although footprints in the rocks must often have been seen, they seem to
+have attracted little or no notice from scientific men until about 1830
+to 1835, when they were almost simultaneously described both in Europe
+and America; even then, it was some time before they were generally
+conceded to be actually the tracks of animals, but, like worm burrows
+and trails, were looked upon as the impressions of sea-weeds.
+
+The now famous tracks in the "brown stone" of the Connecticut Valley
+seem to have first been seen by Pliny Moody in 1802, when he ploughed up
+a specimen on his farm, showing small imprints, which later on were
+popularly called the tracks of Noah's raven. The discovery passed
+without remark until in 1835 the footprints came under the observation
+of Dr. James Deane, who, in turn, called Professor Hitchcock's attention
+to them. The latter at once began a systematic study of these
+impressions, publishing his first account in 1836 and continuing his
+researches for many years, in the course of which he brought together
+the fine collection in Amherst College. At that time Dinosaurs were
+practically unknown, and it is not to be wondered at that these
+three-toed tracks, great and small, were almost universally believed to
+be those of birds. So it is greatly to the credit of Dr. Deane, who also
+studied these footprints, that he was led to suspect that they might
+have been made by other animals. This suspicion was partly caused by the
+occasional association of four and five-toed prints with the three-toed
+impressions, and partly by the rare occurrence of imprints showing the
+texture of the sole of the foot, which was quite different from that of
+any known bird.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Where a Dinosaur Sat Down.]
+
+In the light of our present knowledge we are able to read many things in
+these tracks that were formerly more or less obscure, and to see in them
+a complete verification of Dr. Deane's suspicion that they were not made
+by birds. We see clearly that the long tracks called _Anomoepus_,
+with their accompanying short fore feet, mark where some Dinosaur
+squatted down to rest or progressed slowly on all-fours, as does the
+kangaroo when feeding quietly;[3] and we interpret the curious
+heart-shaped depression sometimes seen back of the feet, not as the mark
+of a stubby tail, but as made by the ends of the slender pubes, bones
+that help form the hip-joints. Then, too, the mark of the inner, or
+short first, toe, is often very evident, although it was a long time
+before the bones of this toe were actually found, and many of the
+Dinosaurs now known to have four toes were supposed to have but three.
+
+[3] _It is to be noted that a leaping kangaroo touches the ground
+neither with his heel nor his tail, but that between jumps he rests
+momentarily on his toes only; hence impressions made by any creature
+that jumped like a kangaroo would be very short._
+
+It seems strange, and it is strange, that while so many hundreds of
+tracks should have been found in the limited area exposed to view, so
+few bones have been found--our knowledge of the veritable animals that
+made the tracks being a blank. A few examples have, it is true, been
+found, but these are only a tithe of those known to have existed; while
+of the great animals that strode along the shore, leaving tracks fifteen
+inches long and a yard apart pressed deeply into the hard sand, not a
+bone remains. The probability is that the strata containing their bones
+lie out to sea, whither their bodies were carried by tides and currents,
+and that we may never see more than the few fragments that were
+scattered along the seaside.
+
+That part of the Valley of the Connecticut wherein the footprints are
+found seems to have been a long, narrow estuary running southward from
+Turner's Falls, Mass., where the tracks are most abundant and most
+clear. The topography was such that this estuary was subject to sudden
+and great fluctuations of the water-level, large tracts of shore being
+now left dry to bake in the sun, and again covered by turbid water which
+deposited on the bottom a layer of mud. Over and over again this
+happened, forming layer upon layer of what is now stone, sometimes the
+lapse of time between the deposits being so short that the tracks of
+the big Dinosaurs extend through several sheets of stone; while again
+there was a period of drouth when the shore became so dry and firm as to
+retain but a single shallow impression.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Footprints of Dinosaurs on the Brownstone of the
+Connecticut Valley. _From a slab in the museum of Amherst College._]
+
+Something of the wealth of animal life that roamed about this estuary
+may be gathered from the number of different footprints recorded on the
+sands, and these are so many and so varied that Professor Hitchcock in
+two extensive reports enumerated over 150 species, representing various
+groups of animals. One little point must, however, be borne in mind,
+that mere size is no sure indication of differences in dealing with
+reptiles, for these long-lived creatures grow almost continuously
+throughout life, so that one animal even may have left his footprints
+over and over in assorted sizes from one end of the valley to the other.
+
+The slab shown in Fig. 7 is a remarkably fine example of these
+Connecticut River footprints; it shows in relief forty-eight tracks of
+the animal called Brontozoum sillimanium and six of a lesser species.
+It was quarried near Middletown, in 1778, and for sixty years did duty
+as a flagstone, fortunately with the face downwards. When taken up for
+repairs the tracks were discovered, and later on the slab, which
+measures three by five feet, was transferred to the museum of Amherst
+College.
+
+There is an interesting parallel between the history of footprints in
+England and America, for they were noticed at about the same time, 1830,
+in both countries; in each case the tracks were in rocks of Triassic
+age, and, in both instances, the animals that made them have never been
+found. In England, however, the tracks first found were those ascribed
+to tortoises, though a little later Dinosaur footprints were discovered
+in the same locality. Oddly enough these numerous tracks all run one
+way, from west to east, as if the animals were migrating, or were
+pursuing some well-known and customary route to their feeding grounds.
+
+For some reason Triassic rocks are particularly rich in footprints; for
+from strata of this same age in the Rhine Valley come those curious
+examples so like the mark of a stubby hand that Dr. Kaup christened the
+beast supposed to have made them _Cheirotherium_, beast with a hand,
+suggesting that they had been made by some gigantic opossum. As the
+tracks measure five by eight inches, it would have been rather a large
+specimen, but the mammals had not then arisen, and it is generally
+believed that the impressions were made by huge (for their kind)
+salamander-like creatures, known as labyrinthodonts, whose remains are
+found in the same strata.
+
+Footprints may aid greatly in determining the attitude assumed by
+extinct animals, and in this way they have been of great service in
+furnishing proof that many of the Dinosaurs walked erect. The
+impressions on the sands of the old Connecticut estuary may be said to
+show this very plainly, but in England and Belgium is evidence still
+more conclusive, in the shape of tracks ascribed to the Iguanodon. These
+were made on soft soil into which the feet sank much more deeply than in
+the Connecticut sands, and the casts made in the natural moulds show the
+impression of toes very clearly. If the animals had walked flat-footed,
+as we do, the prints of the toes would have been followed by a long heel
+mark, but such is not the case; there are the sharply defined marks of
+the toes and nothing more, showing plainly that the Iguanodons walked,
+like birds, on the toes alone. More than this, had these Dinosaurs
+dragged their tails there would have been a continuous furrow between
+the footprints; but nothing of this sort is to be found; on the
+contrary, a fine series of tracks, uncovered at Hastings, England, made
+by several individuals and running for seventy-five feet, shows
+footprints only. Hence it may be fairly concluded that these great
+creatures carried their tails clear of the ground, as shown in the
+picture of _Thespesius_, the weight of the tail counterbalancing that of
+the body. Where crocodilians or some of the short-limbed Dinosaurs have
+crept along there is, as we should expect, a continuous furrow between
+the imprints of the feet. This is what footprints tell us when their
+message is read aright; when improperly translated they only add to the
+enormous bulk of our ignorance.
+
+Some years ago we were treated to accounts of wonderful footprints in
+the rock of the prison-yard at Carson City, Nev., which, according to
+the papers, not only showed that men existed at a much earlier period
+than the scientific supposed, but that they were men of giant stature.
+This was clearly demonstrated by the footprints, for they were such as
+_might_ have been made by huge moccasined feet, and this was all that
+was necessary for the conclusion that they _were_ made by just such
+feet. For it is a curious fact that the majority of mankind seem to
+prefer any explanation other than the most simple and natural,
+particularly in the case of fossils, and are always looking for a
+primitive race of gigantic men.
+
+Bones of the Mastodon and Mammoth have again and again been eagerly
+accepted as those of giants; a salamander was brought forward as
+evidence of the deluge (_homo diluvii testis_); ammonites and their
+allies pose as fossil snakes, and the "petrified man" flourishes
+perennially. However, in this case the prints were recognized by
+naturalists as having most probably been made by some great ground
+sloth, such as the Mylodon or Morotherium, these animals, though
+belonging to a group whose headquarters were in Patagonia, having
+extended their range as far north as Oregon. That the tracks seemed to
+have been made by a biped, rather than a quadruped, was due to the fact
+that the prints of the hind feet fell upon and obliterated the marks of
+the fore. Still, a little observation showed that here and there prints
+of the fore feet were to be seen, and on one spot were indications of a
+struggle between two of the big beasts. The mud, or rather the stone
+that had been mud, bears the imprints of opposing feet, one set deeper
+at the toes, the other at the heels, as if one animal had pushed and the
+other resisted. In the rock, too, are broad depressions bearing the
+marks of coarse hair, where one creature had apparently sat on its
+haunches in order to use its fore limbs to the best advantage. Other
+footprints there are in this prison-yard; the great round "spoor" of the
+mammoth, the hoofs of a deer, and the paws of a wolf(?), indicating that
+hereabout was some pool where all these creatures came to drink. More
+than this, we learn that when these prints were made, or shortly after,
+a strong wind blew from the southeast, for on that face of the ridges
+bounding the margin of each big footprint, we find sand that lodged
+against the squeezed-up mud and stuck there to serve as a perpetual
+record of the direction of the wind.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_Almost every museum has some specimen of the Connecticut Valley
+footprints, but the largest and finest collections are in the museums of
+Amherst College, Mass., and Yale University, although, owing to lack of
+room, only a few of the Yale specimens are on exhibition. The collection
+at Amherst comprises most of the types described by Professor E.
+Hitchcock in his "Ichnology of New England," a work in two fully
+illustrated quarto volumes. Other footprints are described and figured
+by Dr. J. Deane in "Ichnographs from the Sandstone of the Connecticut
+River."_
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.--The Track of a Three-toed Dinosaur.]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+RULERS OF THE ANCIENT SEAS
+
+     "_A time there was when the universe was darkness and water,
+     wherein certain animals of frightful and compound mien were
+     generated. There were serpents, and other creatures with the
+     mixed shapes of one another...._"--_The Archaic Genesis._
+
+
+History shows us how in the past nation after nation has arisen,
+increased in size and strength, extended its bounds and dominion until
+it became the ruling power of the world, and then passed out of
+existence, often so completely that nothing has remained save a few
+mounds of dirt marking the graves of former cities. And so has it been
+with the kingdoms of nature. Just as Greece, Carthage, and Rome were
+successively the rulers of the sea in the days that we call old, so,
+long before the advent of man, the seas were ruled by successive races
+of creatures whose bones now lie scattered over the beds of the ancient
+seas, even as the wrecks of galleys lie strewn over the bed of the
+Mediterranean. For a time the armor-clad fishes held undisputed sway;
+then their reign was ended by the coming of the sharks, who in their
+turn gave way to the fish-lizards, the Ichthyosaurs and Plesiosaurs.
+These, however, were rather local in their rule; but the next group of
+reptiles to appear on the scene, the great marine reptiles called
+Mosasaurs, practically extended their empire around the world, from New
+Zealand to North America.
+
+We properly call these reptiles great, for so they were; but there are
+degrees of greatness, and there is a universal tendency to think of the
+animals that have become extinct as much greater than those of the
+present day, to magnify the reptile that we never saw as well as the
+fish that "got away," and it may be safely said that the greatest of
+animals will shrink before a two-foot rule. As a matter of fact, no
+animals are known to have existed that were larger than the whales; and,
+while there are now no reptiles that can compare in bulk with the
+Dinosaurs, there were few Mosasaurs that exceeded in size a first-class
+Crocodile. An occasional Mosasaur reaches a length of forty feet, but
+such are rare indeed, and one even twenty-five feet long is a large
+specimen,[4] while the great Mugger, or Man-eating Crocodile, grows, if
+permitted, to a length of twenty-five or even thirty feet, and need not
+be ashamed to match his bulk and jaws against those of most Mosasaurs.
+
+[4] _It is surprising to find Professor Cope placing the length of the
+Mosasaurs at 70, 80, or 100 feet, as there is not the slightest basis
+for even the lowest of these figures. Professor Williston, the best
+authority on the subject, states, in his volume on the "Cretaceous
+Reptiles of Kansas," that there is not in existence any specimen of a
+Mosasaur indicating a greater length than 45 feet._
+
+The first of these sea-reptiles to be discovered has passed into
+history, and now reposes in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, after
+changing hands two or three times, the original owner being dispossessed
+of his treasure by the subtleties of law, while the next holder was
+deprived of the specimen by main force. Thus the story is told by M.
+Faujas St. Fond, as rendered into English, in Mantell's "Petrifactions
+and their Teachings": "Some workmen, in blasting the rock in one of the
+caverns of the interior of the mountain, perceived, to their
+astonishment, the jaws of a large animal attached to the roof of the
+chasm. The discovery was immediately made known to M. Hoffman, who
+repaired to the spot, and for weeks presided over the arduous task of
+separating the mass of stone containing these remains from the
+surrounding rock. His labors were rewarded by the successful extrication
+of the specimen, which he conveyed in triumph to his house. This
+extraordinary discovery, however, soon became the subject of general
+conversation, and excited so much interest that the canon of the
+cathedral which stands on the mountain resolved to claim the fossil, in
+right of being lord of the manor, and succeeded, after a long and
+harassing lawsuit, in obtaining the precious relic. It remained for
+years in his possession, and Hoffman died without regaining his
+treasure. At length the French Revolution broke out, and the armies of
+the Republic advanced to the gates of Maestricht. The town was
+bombarded; but, at the suggestion of the committee of savans who
+accompanied the French troops to select their share of the plunder, the
+artillery was not suffered to play on that part of the city in which the
+celebrated fossil was known to be preserved. In the meantime, the canon
+of St. Peter's, shrewdly suspecting the reason why such peculiar favor
+was shown to his residence, removed the specimen and concealed it in a
+vault; but, when the city was taken, the French authorities compelled
+him to give up his ill-gotten prize, which was immediately transmitted
+to the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, where it still forms one of the
+most interesting objects in that magnificent collection." And there it
+remains to this day.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--A Great Sea Lizard, _Tylosaurus Dyspelor_. _From
+a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+The seas that rolled over western Kansas were the headquarters of the
+Mosasaurs, and hundreds--aye, thousands--of specimens have been taken
+from the chalk bluffs of that region, some of them in such a fine state
+of preservation that we are not only well acquainted with their internal
+structure, but with their outward appearance as well. They were
+essentially swimming lizards--great, overgrown, and distant relatives of
+the Monitors of Africa and Asia, especially adapted to a roving,
+predatory life by their powerful tails and paddle-shaped feet. Their
+cup-and-ball vertebrae indicate great flexibility of the body, their
+sharp teeth denote ability to capture slippery prey, and the structure
+of the lower jaw shows that they probably ate in a hurry and swallowed
+their food entire, or bolted it in great chunks. The jaws of all
+reptiles are made up of a number of pieces, but these are usually so
+spliced together that each half of the jaw is one inflexible, or nearly
+inflexible, mass of bone. In snakes, which swallow their prey entire,
+the difficulty of swallowing animals greater in diameter than themselves
+is surmounted by having the two halves of the lower jaw loosely joined
+at the free ends, so that these may spread wide apart and thus increase
+the gape of the mouth. This is also helped by the manner in which the
+jaw is joined to the head. The pelican solves the problem by the length
+of his mandibles, this allowing so much spring that when open they bow
+apart to form a nice little landing net. In the Mosasaurs, as in the
+cormorants, among birds, there is a sort of joint in each half of the
+lower jaw which permits it to bow outward when opened, and this, aided
+by the articulation of the jaw with the cranium, adds greatly to the
+swallowing capacity. Thus in nature the same end is attained by very
+different methods. To borrow a suggestion from Professor Cope, if the
+reader will extend his arms at full length, the palms touching, and then
+bend his elbows outward he will get a very good idea of the action of a
+Mosasaur's jaw. The western sea was a lively place in the day of the
+great Mosasaurs, for with them swam the king of turtles, Archelon, as
+Mr. Wieland has fitly named him, a creature a dozen feet or more in
+length, with a head a full yard long, while in the shallows prowled
+great fishes with massive jaws and teeth like spikes.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Jaw of a Mosasaur, Showing the Joint that
+Increased the Swallowing Capacity of that Reptile.]
+
+There, too, was the great, toothed diver, Hesperornis (see page 83),
+while over the waters flew pterodactyls, with a spread of wing of twenty
+feet, largest of all flying creatures; and, not improbably--nay, very
+probably--fish-eaters, too; and when each and all of these were seeking
+their dinners, there were troublous times for the small fry in that old
+Kansan sea.
+
+And then there came a change; to the south, to the west, to the north,
+the land was imperceptibly but surely rising, perhaps only an inch or
+two in a century, but still rising, until "The Ocean in which flourished
+this abundant and vigorous life was at last completely inclosed on the
+west by elevations of sea-bottom, so that it only communicated with the
+Atlantic and Pacific at the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Sea."
+
+The continued elevation of both eastern and western shores contracted
+its area, and when ridges of the sea-bottom reached the surface, forming
+long, low bars, parts of the water-area were included, and connection
+with salt-water prevented. Thus were the living beings imprisoned and
+subjected to many new risks to life. The stronger could more readily
+capture the weaker, while the fishes would gradually perish through the
+constant freshening of the water. With the death of any considerable
+class, the balance of food-supply would be lost, and many large species
+would disappear from the scene. The most omnivorous and enduring would
+longest resist the approach of starvation, but would finally yield to
+inexorable fate--the last one caught by the shifting bottom among
+shallow pools, from which his exhausted energies could not extricate
+him.[5]
+
+[5] _Cope: "The Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West," p.
+50, being the "Report of the United States Geological Survey of the
+Territories," Vol. II._
+
+Like the "Fossil man" the sea-serpent flourishes perennially in the
+newspapers and, despite the fact that he is now mainly regarded as a
+joke, there have been many attempts to habilitate this mythical monster
+and place him on a foundation of firm fact. The most earnest of these
+was that of M. Oudemans, who expressed his belief in the existence of
+some rare and huge seal-like creature whose occasional appearance in
+southern waters gave rise to the best authenticated reports of the
+sea-serpent. Among other possibilities it has been suggested that some
+animal believed to be extinct had really lived over to the present day.
+Now there are a few waifs, spared from the wrecks of ancient faunas,
+stranded on the shores of the present, such as the Australian Ceratodus
+and the Gar Pikes of North America, and these and all other creatures
+that could be mustered in were used as proofs to sustain this theory.
+If, it was said, these animals have been spared, why not others? If a
+fish of such ancient lineage as the Gar Pike is so common as to be a
+nuisance, why may there not be a few Plesiosaurs or a Mosasaur somewhere
+in the depths of the ocean? The argument was a good one, the more that
+we may "suppose" almost anything, but it must be said that no trace of
+any of these creatures has so far been found outside of the strata in
+which they have long been known to occur, and all the probabilities are
+opposed to this theory. Still, if some of these creatures _had_ been
+spared, they might well have passed for sea-serpents, even though
+Zeuglodon, the one most like a serpent in form, was the one most
+remotely related to snakes.
+
+Zeuglodon, the yoke-tooth, so named from the shape of its great cutting
+teeth, was indeed a strange animal, and if we wonder at the Greenland
+Whale, whose head is one-third its total length, we may equally wonder
+at Zeuglodon, with four feet of head, ten feet of body, and forty feet
+of tail. No one, seeing the bones of the trunk and tail for the first
+time, would suspect that they belonged to the same animal, for while the
+vertebrae of the body are of moderate size, those of the tail are, for
+the bulk of creature, the longest known, measuring from fifteen to
+eighteen inches in length, and weighing in a fossil condition fifty to
+sixty pounds. In life, the animal was from fifty to seventy feet in
+length, and not more than six or eight feet through the deepest part of
+the body, while the tail was much less; the head was small and pointed,
+the jaws well armed with grasping and cutting teeth, and just back of
+the head was a pair of short paddles, not unlike those of a fur seal. It
+is curious to speculate on the habits of a creature in which the tail
+so obviously wagged the dog and whose articulations all point to great
+freedom of movement up and down. This may mean that it was an active
+diver, descending to great depths to prey upon squid, as the Sperm-Whale
+does to-day, while it seems quite certain that it must have reared at
+least a third of its great length out of water to take a comprehensive
+view of its surroundings. And if size is any indication of power, the
+great tail, which obviously ended in flukes like those of a whale, must
+have been capable of propelling the beast at a speed of twenty or thirty
+miles an hour. Something of the kind must have been needed in order that
+the small head might provide food enough for the great tail, and it has
+been suggested that inability to do this was the reason why Zeuglodon
+became extinct. On the other hand, it has been ingeniously argued that
+the huge tail served to store up fat when food was plenty, which was
+drawn upon when food became scarce. The fur seals do something similar
+to this, for the males come on shore in May rolling in blubber, and
+depart in September lean and hungry after a three months' fast.
+
+Zeuglodons must have been very numerous in the old Gulf of Mexico, for
+bones are found abundantly through portions of our Southern States; it
+was also an inhabitant of the old seas of southern Europe, but, as we
+shall see, it gave place to the great fossil shark, and this in turn
+passed out of existence. Still, common though its bones may be, stories
+of their use for making stone walls--and these stories are still in
+circulation--resolve themselves on close scrutiny into the occasional
+use of a big vertebra to support the corner of a corn-crib.
+
+The scientific name of Zeuglodon is _Basilosaurus cetoides_, the
+whale-like king lizard--the first of these names, _Basilosaurus_, having
+been given to it by the original describer, Dr. Harlan, who supposed the
+animal to have been a reptile. Now it is a primary rule of nomenclature
+that the first name given to an animal must stick and may not be
+changed, even by the act of a zooelogical congress, so Zeuglodon must, so
+far as its name is concerned, masquerade as a reptile for the rest of
+its paleontological life. This, however, really matters very little,
+because scientific names are simply verbal handles by which we may grasp
+animals to describe them, and Dr. Le Conte, to show how little there may
+be in a name, called a beetle Gyascutus. Owen's name of Zeuglodon,
+although not tenable as a scientific name, is too good to be wasted, and
+being readily remembered and easily pronounced may be used as a popular
+name.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Koch's Hydrarchus, Composed of Portions of the
+Skeleton of Several Zeuglodons.]
+
+One might think that a creature sixty or seventy feet long was amply
+long enough, but Dr. Albert Koch thought otherwise, and did with
+Zeuglodon as, later on, he did with the Mastodon, combining the vertebrae
+of several individuals until he had a monster 114 feet long! This he
+exhibited in Europe under the name of Hydrarchus, or water king, finally
+disposing of the composite creature to the Museum of Dresden, where it
+was promptly reduced to its proper dimensions. The natural make-up of
+Zeuglodon is sufficiently composite without any aid from man, for the
+head and paddles are not unlike those of a seal, the ribs are like those
+of a manatee, and the shoulder blades are precisely like those of a
+whale, while the vertebrae are different from those of any other animal,
+even its own cousin and lesser contemporary Dorudon. There were also
+tiny hind legs tucked away beneath skin, but these, as well as many
+other parts of the animal's structure were unknown, until Mr. Charles
+Schuchert collected a series of specimens for the National Museum, from
+which it was possible to restore the entire skeleton. Owing to a rather
+curious circumstance the first attempt at a restoration was at fault;
+among the bones originally obtained by Mr. Schuchert there were none
+from the last half of the tail, an old gully having cut off the hinder
+portion of the backbone and destroyed the vertebrae. Not far away,
+however, was a big lump of stone containing several vertebrae of just the
+right size, and these were used as models to complete the papier-mache
+skeleton shown at Atlanta, in 1894. But a year after Mr. Schuchert
+collected a series of vertebrae, beginning with the tip of the tail, and
+these showed conclusively that the first lot of tail vertebrae belonged
+to a creature still undescribed and one probably more like a whale than
+Zeuglodon himself, whose exact relationships are a little uncertain, as
+may be imagined from what was said of its structure. Mixed with the
+bones of Zeuglodon was the shell of a turtle, nearly three feet long,
+and part of the backbone of a great water-snake that must have been
+twenty-five feet long, both previously quite unknown. One more curious
+thing about Zeuglodon bones remains to be told, and then we are done
+with him; ordinarily a fossil bone will break indifferently in any
+direction, but the bones of Zeuglodon are built, like an onion, of
+concentric layers, and these have a great tendency to peel off during
+the preparation of a specimen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, as the wheels of time and change rolled slowly on, sharks again
+came uppermost, and the warmer Eocene and Miocene oceans appear to have
+fairly teemed with these sea wolves. There were small sharks with
+slender teeth for catching little fishes, there were larger sharks with
+saw-like teeth for cutting slices out of larger fishes, and there were
+sharks that might almost have swallowed the biggest fish of to-day
+whole, sharks of a size the waters had never before contained, and
+fortunately do not contain now. We know these monsters mostly by their
+teeth, for their skeletons were cartilaginous, and this absence of their
+remains is probably the reason why these creatures are passed by while
+the adjectives huge, immense, enormous are lavished on the Mosasaurs and
+Plesiosaurs--animals that the great-toothed shark, _Carcharodon
+megalodon_, might well have eaten at a meal. For the gaping jaws of one
+of these sharks, with its hundreds of gleaming teeth must, at a moderate
+estimate, have measured not less than six feet across.
+
+The great White Shark, the man-eater, so often found in story books, so
+rarely met with in real life, attains a length of thirty feet, and a man
+just makes him a good, satisfactory lunch. Now a tooth of this shark is
+an inch and a quarter long, while a tooth of the huge _Megalodon_ is
+commonly three, often four, and not infrequently five inches long.
+Applying the rule of three to such a tooth as this would give a shark
+120 feet long, bigger than most whales, to whom a man would be but a
+mouthful, just enough to whet his sharkship's appetite. Even granting
+that the rule of three unduly magnifies the dimensions of the brute, and
+making an ample reduction, there would still remain a fish between
+seventy-five and one hundred feet long, quite large enough to satisfy
+the most ambitious of _tuna_ fishers, and to have made bathing in the
+Miocene ocean unpopular. Contemporary with the great-toothed shark was
+another and closely related species that originated with him in Eocene
+times, and these two may possibly have had something to do with the
+extinction of Zeuglodon. This species is distinguished by having on
+either side of the base of the great triangular cutting teeth a little
+projection or cusp, like the "ear" on a jar, so that this species has
+been named _auriculatus_, or eared. The edges of the teeth are also more
+saw-like than in those of its greater relative, and as the species must
+have attained a length of fifty or sixty feet it may, with its better
+armature, have been quite as formidable. And, as perhaps the readers of
+these pages may know, the supply of teeth never ran short. Back of each
+tooth, one behind another arranged in serried ranks, lay a reserve of
+six or seven smaller, but growing teeth, and whenever a tooth of the
+front row was lost, the tooth immediately behind it took its place, and
+like a well-trained soldier kept the front line unbroken. Thus the teeth
+of sharks are continually developing at the back, and all the teeth are
+steadily pushing forward, a very simple mechanical arrangement causing
+the teeth to lie flat until they reach the front of the jaw and come
+into use.
+
+Once fairly started in life, these huge sharks spread themselves
+throughout the warm seas of the world, for there was none might stand
+before them and say nay. They swarmed along our southern coast, from
+Maryland to Texas; they swarmed everywhere that the water was
+sufficiently warm, for their teeth occur in Tertiary strata in many
+parts of the world, and the deep-sea dredges of the Challenger and
+Albatross have brought up their teeth by scores. And then--they
+perished, perished as utterly as did the hosts of Sennacherib. Why? We
+do not know. Did they devour everything large enough to be eaten
+throughout their habitat, and then fall to eating one another? Again, we
+do not know. But perish they did, while the smaller white shark, which
+came into being at the same time, still lives, as if to emphasize the
+fact that it is best not to overdo things, and that in the long run the
+victory is not _always_ to the largest.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The finest Mosasaur skeleton ever discovered, an almost complete
+skeleton of Tylosaurus dyspelor, 29 feet in length, may be seen at the
+head of the staircase leading to the Hall of Paleontology, in the
+American Museum of Natural History, New York. Another good specimen may
+be seen in the Yale University Museum, which probably has the largest
+collection of Mosasaurs in existence. Another fine collection is in the
+Museum of the State University of Kansas, at Lawrence._
+
+_The best Zeuglodon, the first to show the vestigial hind legs and to
+make clear other portions of the structure, is in the United States
+National Museum._
+
+_The great sharks are known in this country by their teeth only, and, as
+these are common in the phosphate beds, specimens may be seen in
+almost any collection. In the United States National Museum, the jaws of
+a twelve-foot blue shark are shown for comparison. The largest tooth in
+that collection is 5-3/4 inches high and 5 inches across the base. It
+takes five teeth of the blue shark to fill the same number of inches._
+
+_The Mosasaurs are described in detail by Professor S. W. Williston, in
+Vol. IV. of the "University Geological Survey of Kansas." There is a
+technical--and, consequently, uninteresting--account of Zeuglodon in
+Vol. XXIII. of the "Proceedings of the United States National Museum,"
+page 327._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 12.--A Tooth of Zeuglodon, one of the "Yoke Teeth,"
+from which it derives the name.]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+BIRDS OF OLD
+
+    "_With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
+    And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies._"
+
+
+When we come to discuss the topic of the earliest bird--not the one in
+the proverb--our choice of subjects is indeed limited, being restricted
+to the famous and oft-described Archaeopteryx from the quarries of
+Solenhofen, which at present forms the starting-point in the history of
+the feathered race. Bird-like, or at least feathered, creatures, must
+have existed before this, as it is improbable that feathers and flight
+were acquired at one bound, and this lends probability to the view that
+at least some of the tracks in the Connecticut Valley are really the
+footprints of birds. Not birds as we now know them, but still creatures
+wearing feathers, these being the distinctive badge and livery of the
+order. For we may well speak of the feathered race, the exclusive
+prerogative of the bird being not flight but feathers; no bird is
+without them, no other creature wears them, so that birds may be exactly
+defined in two words, feathered animals. Reptiles, and even mammals, may
+go quite naked or cover themselves with a defensive armor of bony plates
+or horny scales; but under the blaze of the tropical sun or in the chill
+waters of arctic seas birds wear feathers only, although in the penguins
+the feathers have become so changed that their identity is almost lost.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Archaeopteryx, the Earliest Known Bird. _From
+the specimen in the Berlin Museum._]
+
+So far as flight goes, there is one entire order of mammals, whose
+members, the bats, are quite as much at home in the air as the birds
+themselves, and in bygone days the empire of the air belonged to the
+pterodactyls; even frogs and fishes have tried to fly, and some of the
+latter have nearly succeeded in the attempt. As for wings, it may be
+said that they are made on very different patterns in such animals as
+the pterodactyl, bat, and bird, and that while the end to be achieved is
+the same, it is reached by very different methods. The wing membrane of
+a bat is spread between his out-stretched fingers, the thumb alone
+being left free, while in the pterodactyl the thumb is wanting and the
+membrane supported only by what in us is the little finger, a term that
+is a decided misnomer in the case of the pterodactyl. In birds the
+fingers have lost their individuality, and are modified for the
+attachment or support of the wing feathers, but in Archaeopteryx the hand
+had not reached this stage, for the fingers were partly free and tipped
+with claws.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Nature's Four Methods of Making a Wing. Bat,
+Pterodactyl, Archaeopteryx, and Modern Bird.]
+
+We get some side lights on the structure of primitive birds by studying
+the young and the earlier stages of living species, for in a very
+general way it may be said that the development of the individual is a
+sort of rough sketch or hasty outline of the development of the class of
+which it is a member; thus the transitory stages through which the chick
+passes before hatching give us some idea of the structure of the adult
+birds or bird-like creatures of long ago. Now, in embryonic birds the
+wing ends in a sort of paw and the fingers are separate, quite different
+from what they become a little later on, and not unlike their condition
+in Archaeopteryx, and even more like what is found in the wing of an
+ostrich.
+
+Then, too, there are a few birds still left, such as the ostrich, that
+have not kept pace with the others, and are a trifle more like reptiles
+than the vast majority of their relatives, and these help a little in
+explaining the structure of early birds. Among these is a queer bird
+with a queer name, Hoactzin, found in South America, which when young
+uses its little wings much like legs, just as we may suppose was done by
+birds of old, to climb about the branches. Mr. Quelch, who has studied
+these curious birds in their native wilds of British Guiana, tells us
+that soon after hatching, the nestlings begin to crawl about by means of
+their legs and wings, the well-developed claws on the thumb and finger
+being constantly in use for hooking to surrounding objects. If they are
+drawn from the nest by means of their legs, they hold on firmly to the
+twigs, both with their bill and wings; and if the nest be upset they
+hold on to all objects with which they come in contact by bill, feet,
+and wings, making considerable use of the bill, with the help of the
+clawed wings, to raise themselves to a higher level.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Young Hoactzins.]
+
+Thus, by putting these various facts together we obtain some pretty good
+ideas regarding the appearance and habits of the first birds. The
+immediate ancestors of birds, their exact point of departure from other
+vertebrates, is yet to be discovered; at one time it was considered that
+they were the direct descendants of Dinosaurs, or that at least both
+were derived from the same parent forms, and while that view was almost
+abandoned, it is again being brought forward with much to support it. It
+has also been thought that birds and those flying reptiles, the
+pterodactyls, have had a common ancestry, and the possibility of this is
+still entertained. Be that as it may, it is safe to consider that back
+in the past, earlier than the Jurassic, were creatures neither bird nor
+reptile, but possessing rudimentary feathers and having the promise of a
+wing in the structure of their fore legs, and some time one of these
+animals may come to light; until then Archaeopteryx remains the earliest
+known bird.
+
+In the Jurassic, then, when the Dinosaurs were the lords of the earth
+and small mammals just beginning to appear, we come upon traces of
+full-fledged birds. The first intimation of their presence was the
+imprint of a single feather found in that ancient treasure-house, the
+Solenhofen quarries; but as Hercules was revealed by his foot, so the
+bird was made evident by the feather whose discovery was announced
+August 15, 1861. And a little later, in September of the same year, the
+bird itself turned up, and in 1877 a second specimen was found, the two
+representing two species, if not two distinct genera. These were very
+different from any birds now living--so different, indeed, and bearing
+such evident traces of their reptilian ancestry, that it is necessary to
+place them apart from other animals in a separate division of the class
+birds.
+
+Archaeopteryx was considerably smaller than a crow, with a stout little
+head armed with sharp teeth (as scarce as hens' teeth was no joke in
+that distant period), while as he fluttered through the air he trailed
+after him a tail longer than his body, beset with feathers on either
+side. Everyone knows that nowadays the feathers of a bird's tail are
+arranged like the sticks of a fan, and that the tail opens and shuts
+like a fan. But in Archaeopteryx the feathers were arranged in pairs, a
+feather on each side of every joint of the tail, so that on a small
+scale the tail was something like that of a kite; and because of this
+long, lizard-like tail this bird and his immediate kith and kin are
+placed in a group dubbed Saururae, or lizard tailed.
+
+Because impressions of feathers are not found all around these specimens
+some have thought that they were confined to certain portions of the
+body--the wings, tail, and thighs--the other parts being naked. There
+seems, however, no good reason to suppose that such was the case, for it
+is extremely improbable that such perfect and important feathers as
+those of the wings and tail should alone have been developed, while
+there are many reasons why the feathers of the body might have been lost
+before the bird was covered by mud, or why their impressions do not
+show.
+
+It was a considerable time after the finding of the first specimen that
+the presence of teeth in the jaws was discovered, partly because the
+British Museum specimen was imperfect,[6] and partly because no one
+suspected that birds had ever possessed teeth, and so no one ever looked
+for them. When, in 1877, a more complete example was found, the
+existence of teeth was unmistakably shown; but in the meantime, in
+February, 1873, Professor Marsh had announced the presence of teeth in
+Hesperornis, and so to him belongs the credit of being the discoverer of
+birds with teeth.
+
+[6] _The skull was lacking, and a part of the upper jaw lying to one
+side was thought to belong to a fish._
+
+The next birds that we know are from our own country, and although
+separated by an interval of thousands of years from the Jurassic
+Archaeopteryx, time enough for the members of one group to have quite
+lost their wings, they still retain teeth, and in this respect the most
+bird-like of them is quite unlike any modern bird. These come from the
+chalk beds of western Kansas, and the first specimens were obtained by
+Professor Marsh in his expeditions of 1870 and 1871, but not until a few
+years later, after the material had been cleaned and was being studied,
+was it ascertained that these birds were armed with teeth. The smaller
+of these birds, which was apparently not unlike a small gull in general
+appearance, was, saving its teeth, so thoroughly a bird that it may be
+passed by without further notice, but the larger was remarkable in many
+ways. Hesperornis, the western bird, was a great diver, in some ways the
+greatest of the divers, for it stood higher than the king penguin,
+though more slender and graceful in general build, looking somewhat like
+an overgrown, absolutely wingless loon.
+
+The penguins, as everyone knows, swim with their front limbs--we can't
+call them wings--which, though containing all the bones of a wing, have
+become transformed into powerful paddles; Hesperornis, on the other
+hand, swam altogether with its legs--swam so well with them, indeed,
+that through disuse the wings dwindled away and vanished, save one bone.
+This, however, is not stating the theory quite correctly; of course the
+matter cannot be actually proved. Hesperornis was a large bird, upwards
+of five feet in length, and if its ancestors were equally bulky their
+wings were quite too large to be used in swimming under water, as are
+those of such short-winged forms as the Auks which fly under the water
+quite as much as they fly over it. Hence the wings were closely folded
+upon the body so as to offer the least possible resistance, and being
+disused, they and their muscles dwindled, while the bones and muscles
+of the legs increased by constant use. By the time the wings were small
+enough to be used in so dense a medium as water the muscles had become
+too feeble to move them, and so degeneration proceeded until but one
+bone remained, a mere vestige of the wing that had been. The penguins
+retain their great breast muscles, and so did the Great Auk, because
+their wings are used in swimming, since it requires even more strength
+to move a small wing in water than it does to move a large wing in the
+thinner air. As for our domesticated fowls--the turkeys, chickens, and
+ducks--there has not been sufficient lapse of time for their muscles to
+dwindle, and besides artificial selection, the breeding of fowls for
+food has kept up the mere size of the muscles, although these lack the
+strength to be found in those of wild birds.
+
+As a swimming bird, one that swims with its legs and not with its wings,
+Hesperornis has probably never been equalled, for the size and
+appearance of the bones indicate great power, while the bones of the
+foot were so joined to those of the leg as to turn edgewise as the foot
+was brought forward and thus to offer the least possible resistance to
+the water. It is a remarkable fact that the leg bones of Hesperornis are
+hollow, remarkable because as a rule the bones of aquatic animals are
+more or less solid, their weight being supported by the water; but those
+of the great diver were almost as light as if it had dwelt upon the dry
+land. That it did not dwell there is conclusively shown by its build,
+and above all by its feet, for the foot of a running bird is modified in
+quite another way.
+
+The bird was probably covered with smooth, soft feathers, something like
+those of an Apteryx; this we know because Professor Williston found a
+specimen showing the impression of the skin of the lower part of the leg
+as well as of the feathers that covered the "thigh" and head. While such
+a covering seems rather inadequate for a bird of such exclusively
+aquatic habits as Hesperornis must have been, there seems no getting
+away from the facts in the case in the shape of Professor Williston's
+specimen, and we have in the Snake Bird, one of the most aquatic of
+recent birds, an instance of similarly poor covering. As all know who
+have seen this bird at home, its feathers shed the water very
+imperfectly, and after long-continued submersion become saturated, a
+fact which partly accounts for the habit the bird has of hanging itself
+out to dry.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Hesperornis, the Great Toothed Diver. _From a
+drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+The restoration which Mr. Gleeson has drawn differs radically from any
+yet made, and is the result of a careful study of the specimen belonging
+to the United States National Museum. No one can appreciate the
+peculiarities of Hesperornis and its remarkable departures from other
+swimming birds who has not seen the skeleton mounted in a swimming
+attitude. The great length of the legs, their position at the middle of
+the body, the narrowness of the body back of the hip joint, and the
+disproportionate length of the outer toe are all brought out in a manner
+which a picture of the bird squatting upon its haunches fails utterly to
+show. As for the tail, it is evident from the size and breadth of the
+bones that something of the kind was present; it is also evident that it
+was not like that of an ordinary bird, and so it has been drawn with
+just a suggestion of Archaeopteryx about it.
+
+The most extraordinary thing about Hesperornis, however, is the position
+of the legs relative to the body, and this is something that was not
+even suspected until the skeleton was mounted in a swimming attitude. As
+anyone knows who has watched a duck swim, the usual place for the feet
+and legs is beneath and in a line with the body. But in our great
+extinct diver the articulations of the leg bones are such that this is
+impossible, and the feet and lower joint of the legs (called the tarsus)
+must have stood out nearly at right angles to the body, like a pair of
+oars. This is so peculiar and anomalous an attitude for a bird's legs
+that, although apparently indicated by the shape of the bones, it was at
+first thought to be due to the crushing and consequent distortion to
+which the bones had been subjected, and an endeavor was made to place
+the legs in the ordinary position, even though this was done at the
+expense of some little dislocation of the joints. But when the mounting
+of the skeleton had advanced further it became more evident that
+Hesperornis was not an ordinary bird, and that he could not have swum in
+the usual manner, since this would have brought his great knee-caps up
+into his body, which would have been uncomfortable. And so, at the cost
+of some little time and trouble,[7] the mountings were so changed that
+the legs stood out at the sides of the body, as shown in the picture.
+
+[7] _The mounting of fossil bones is quite a different matter from the
+wiring of an ordinary skeleton, since the bones are not only so hard
+that they cannot be bored and wired like those of a recent animal, but
+they are so brittle and heavy that often they will not sustain their own
+weight. Hence such bones must be supported from the outside, and to do
+this so that the mountings will be strong enough to support their
+weight, allow the bones to be removed for study, and yet be
+inconspicuous, is a difficult task._
+
+A final word remains to be said about toothed birds, which is, that the
+visitor who looks upon one for the first time will probably be
+disappointed. The teeth are so loosely implanted in the jaw that most of
+them fall out shortly after death, while the few that remain are so
+small as not to attract observation.
+
+By the time the Eocene Period was reached, even before that, birds had
+become pretty much what we now see them, and very little change has
+taken place in them since that time; they seem to have become so exactly
+adapted to the conditions of existence that no further modification has
+taken place. This may be expressed in another way, by saying that while
+the Mammals of the Eocene have no near relatives among those now living,
+entire large groups having passed completely out of existence, the few
+birds that we know might, so far as their appearance and affinities go,
+have been killed yesterday.
+
+Were we to judge of the former abundance of birds by the number we find
+in a fossil state, we should conclude that in the early days of the
+world they were remarkably scarce, for bird bones are among the rarest
+of fossils. But from the high degree of development evidenced by the few
+examples that have come to light, and the fact that these represent
+various and quite distinct species,[8] we are led to conclude that
+birds were abundant enough, but that we simply do not find them.
+
+[8] _But three birds, besides a stray feather or two, are so far known
+from the Eocene of North America. One of these is a fowl not very unlike
+some of the small curassows of South America; another is a little bird,
+supposed to be related to the sparrows, while the third is a large bird
+of uncertain relationships._
+
+Several eggs, too--or, rather, casts of eggs--have lately been found in
+the Cretaceous and Miocene strata of the West; and, as eggs and birds
+are usually associated, we are liable at any time to come upon the bones
+of the birds that laid them.
+
+To the writer's mind no thoroughly satisfactory explanation has been
+given for the scarcity of bird remains; but the reason commonly advanced
+is that, owing to their lightness, dead birds float for a much longer
+time than other animals, and hence are more exposed to the ravages of
+the weather and the attacks of carrion-feeding animals. It has also been
+said that the power of flight enabled birds to escape calamities that
+caused the death of contemporary animals; but all birds do not fly; and
+birds do fall victims to storms, cold, and starvation, and even perish
+of pestilence, like the Cormorants of Bering Island, whose ranks have
+twice been decimated by disease.
+
+It is true that where carnivorous animals abound, dead birds do
+disappear quickly; and my friend Dr. Stejneger tells me that, while
+hundreds of dead sea-fowl are cast on the shores of the Commander
+Islands, it is a rare thing to find one after daylight, as the bodies
+are devoured by the Arctic foxes that prowl about the shores at night.
+But, again, as in the Miocene of Southern France and in the Pliocene of
+Oregon, remains of birds are fairly numerous, showing that, under proper
+conditions, their bones are preserved for future reference, so that we
+may hope some day to come upon specimens that will enable us to round
+out the history of bird life in the past.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The first discovered specimen of Archaeopteryx, Archaeopteryx macrura, is
+in the British Museum, the second more complete example is in the Royal
+Museum of Natural History, Berlin. The largest collection of toothed
+birds, including the types of Hesperornis, Ichthyornis and others, is in
+the Yale University Museum, at New Haven. The United States National
+Museum at Washington has a fine mounted skeleton of Hesperornis, and the
+State University of Kansas, at Lawrence, has the example showing the
+impressions of feathers._
+
+_For scientific descriptions of these birds the reader is referred to
+Owen's paper "On the Archaeopteryx of von Meyer, with a Description of
+the Fossil Remains, etc.," in the "Transactions of the Philosophical
+Society of London for 1863," page 33, and "Odontornithes, a Monograph of
+the Extinct Toothed Birds of North America," by O. C. Marsh. Much
+popular and scientific information concerning the early birds is to be
+found in Newton's "Dictionary of Birds," and "The Story of Bird Life,"
+by W. P. Pycraft; the "Structure and Life of Birds," by F. W. Headley;
+"The Story of the Birds," by J. Newton Baskett._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Archaeopteryx as Restored by Mr. Pycraft.]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE DINOSAURS
+
+    "_Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small._"
+
+
+A few million years ago, geologists and physicists do not agree upon the
+exact number, although both agree upon the millions, when the Rocky
+Mountains were not yet born and the now bare and arid western plains a
+land of lakes, rivers, and luxuriant vegetation, the region was
+inhabited by a race of strange and mighty reptiles upon whom science has
+bestowed the appropriate name of Dinosaurs, or terrible lizards.
+
+Our acquaintance with the Dinosaurs is comparatively recent, dating from
+the early part of the nineteenth century, and in America, at least, the
+date may be set at 1818, when the first Dinosaur remains were found in
+the Valley of the Connecticut, although they naturally were not
+recognized as such, nor had the term been devised. The first Dinosaur
+to be formally recognized as representing quite a new order of reptiles
+was the carnivorous Megalosaur, found near Oxford, England, in 1824.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Thespesius. A Common Herbivorous Dinosaur of
+the Cretaceous. _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+For a long time our knowledge of Dinosaurs was very imperfect and
+literally fragmentary, depending mostly upon scattered teeth, isolated
+vertebrae, or fragments of bone picked up on the surface or casually
+encountered in some mine or quarry. Now, however, thanks mainly to the
+labors of American palaeontologists, thanks also to the rich deposits of
+fossils in our Western States, we have an extensive knowledge of the
+Dinosaurs, of their size, structure, habits, and general appearance.
+
+There are to-day no animals living that are closely related to them;
+none have lived for a long period of time, for the Dinosaurs came to an
+end in the Cretaceous, and it can only be said that the crocodiles, on
+the one hand, and the ostriches, on the other, are the nearest existing
+relatives of these great reptiles.
+
+For, though so different in outward appearance, birds and reptiles are
+structurally quite closely allied, and the creeping snake and the bird
+on which it preys are relatives, although any intimate relationship
+between them is of the serpent's making, and is strongly objected to by
+the bird.
+
+But if we compare the skeleton of a Dinosaur with that of an ostrich--a
+young one is preferable--and with those of the earlier birds, we shall
+find that many of the barriers now existing between reptiles and birds
+are broken down, and that they have many points in common. In fact, save
+in the matter of clothes, wherein birds differ from all other animals,
+the two great groups are not so very far apart.
+
+The Dinosaurs were by no means confined to North America, although the
+western United States seem to have been their headquarters, but ranged
+pretty much over the world, for their remains have been found in every
+continent, even in far-off New Zealand.
+
+In point of time they ranged from the Trias to the Upper Cretaceous,
+their golden age, marking the culminating point of reptilian life, being
+in the Jurassic, when huge forms stalked by the sea-shore, browsed amid
+the swamps, or disported themselves along the reedy margins of lakes
+and rivers.
+
+They had their day, a day of many thousand years, and then passed away,
+giving place to the superior race of mammals which was just springing
+into being when the huge Dinosaurs were in the heyday of their
+existence.
+
+And it does seem as if in the dim and distant past, as in the present,
+brains were a potent factor in the struggle for supremacy; for, though
+these reptiles were giants in size, dominating the earth through mere
+brute force, they were dwarfs in intellect.
+
+The smallest human brain that is thought to be compatible with life
+itself weighs a little over ten ounces, the smallest that can exist with
+reasoning powers is two pounds; this in a creature weighing from 120 to
+150 pounds.
+
+What do we find among Dinosaurs? Thespesius, or Claosaurus, which may
+have walked where Baltimore now stands, was twenty-five feet in length
+and stood a dozen feet high in his bare feet, had a brain smaller than a
+man's clenched fist, weighing less than one pound.
+
+Brontosaurus, in some respects the biggest brute that ever walked, was
+but little better off, and Triceratops, and his relatives, creatures
+having twice the bulk of an elephant, weighing probably over ten tons,
+possessed a brain weighing not over two pounds!
+
+How much of what we term intelligence could such a creature
+possess--what was the extent of its reasoning powers? Judging from our
+own standpoint and the small amount of intellect apparent in some humans
+with much larger brains, these big reptiles must have known just about
+enough to have eaten when they were hungry, anything more was
+superfluous.
+
+However, intelligence is one thing, life another, and the spinal cord,
+with its supply of nerve-substance, doubtless looked after the mere
+mechanical functions of life; and while even the spinal cord is in many
+cases quite small, in some places, particularly in the sacral region, it
+is subject to considerable enlargement. This is notably true of
+Stegosaurus, where the sacral enlargement is twenty times the bulk of
+the puny brain--a fact noted by Professor Marsh, and seized upon by the
+newspapers, which announced that he had discovered a Dinosaur with a
+brain in its pelvis.
+
+In their great variety of size and shape the Dinosaurs form an
+interesting parallel with the Marsupials of Australia. For just as these
+are, as it were, an epitome of the class of mammals, mimicking the
+herbivores, carnivores, rodents and even monkeys, so there are
+carnivorous and herbivorous Dinosaurs--Dinosaurs that dwelt on land and
+others that habitually resided in the water, those that walked upright
+and those that crawled about on all fours; and, while there are no hints
+that any possessed the power of flight, some members of the group are
+very bird-like in form and structure, so much so that it has been
+thought that the two may have had a common ancestry.
+
+The smallest of the Dinosaurs whose acquaintance we have made were
+little larger than chickens; the largest claim the distinction of being
+the largest known quadrupeds that have walked the face of the earth, the
+giants not only of their day, but of all time, before whose huge frames
+the bones of the Mammoth, that familiar byword for all things great,
+seem slight.
+
+For Brontosaurus, the Thunder Lizard, beneath whose mighty tread the
+earth shook, and his kindred were from 40 to 60 feet long and 10 to 14
+feet high, their thigh bones measuring 5 to 6 feet in length, being the
+largest single bones known to us, while some of the vertebrae were 4-1/2
+feet high, exceeding in dimensions those of a whale.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 19--A Hind Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, the
+Largest of the Dinosaurs.]
+
+The group to which Brontosaurus belongs, including Diplodocus and
+Morosaurus, is distinguished by a large, though rather short, body,
+very long neck and tail, and, for the size of the animal, a very small
+head. In fact, the head was so small and, in the case of Diplodocus, so
+poorly provided with teeth that it must have been quite a task, or a
+long-continued pleasure, according to the state of its digestive
+apparatus, for the animal to have eaten its daily meal.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 20.--A Single Vertebra of Brontosaurus.]
+
+An elephant weighing 5 tons eats 100 pounds of hay and 25 pounds of
+grain for his day's ration; but, as this food is in a comparatively
+concentrated form, it would require at least twice this weight of green
+fodder.
+
+It is a difficult matter to estimate the weight of a live Diplodocus or
+a Brontosaurus, but it is pretty safe to say that it would not be far
+from 20 tons, and that one would devour at the very least something over
+700 pounds of leaves or twigs or plants each day--more, if the animal
+felt really hungry.
+
+But here we must, even if reluctantly, curb our imagination a little and
+consider another point: the cold-blooded, sluggish reptiles, as we know
+them to-day, do not waste their energies in rapid movements, or in
+keeping the temperature of their bodies above that of the air, and so by
+no means require the amount of food needed by more active, warm-blooded
+animals. Alligators, turtles, and snakes will go for weeks, even months,
+without food, and while this applies more particularly to those that
+dwell in temperate climes and during their winter hibernation
+practically suspend the functions of digestion and respiration, it is
+more or less true of all reptiles. And as there is little reason for
+supposing that reptiles behaved in the past any differently from what
+they do in the present, these great Dinosaurs may, after all, not have
+been gifted with such ravenous appetites as one might fancy. Still, it
+is dangerous to lay down any hard and fast laws concerning animals, and
+he who writes about them is continually obliged to qualify his
+remarks--in sporting parlance, to hedge a little, and in the present
+instance there is some reason, based on the arrangement of vertebrae and
+ribs, to suppose that the lungs of Dinosaurs were somewhat like those of
+birds, and that, as a corollary, their blood may have been better
+aerated and warmer than that of living reptiles. But, to return to the
+question of food.
+
+From the peculiar character of the articulations of the limb-bones, it
+is inferred that these animals were largely aquatic in their habits, and
+fed on some abundant species of water plants. One can readily see the
+advantage of the long neck in browsing off the vegetation on the bottom
+of shallow lakes, while the animal was submerged, or in rearing the head
+aloft to scan the surrounding shores for the approach of an enemy. Or,
+with the tail as a counterpoise, the entire body could be reared out of
+water and the head be raised some thirty feet in the air.
+
+Triceratops, he of the three-horned face, had a remarkable skull which
+projected backward over the neck, like a fireman's helmet, or a
+sunbonnet worn hind side before, while over each eye was a massive horn
+directed forward, a third, but much smaller horn being sometimes present
+on the nose.
+
+The little "Horned Toad," which isn't a toad at all, is the nearest
+suggestion we have to-day of Triceratops; but, could he realize the
+ambition of the frog in the fable and swell himself to the dimensions of
+an ox, he would even then be but a pigmy compared with his ancient and
+distant relative.
+
+So far as mere appearance goes he would compare very well, for while so
+much is said about the strange appearance of the Dinosaurs, it is to be
+borne in mind that their peculiarities are enhanced by their size, and
+that there are many lizards of to-day that lack only stature to be even
+more _bizarre_; and, for example, were the Australian Moloch but big
+enough, he could give even Stegosaurus "points" in more ways than one.
+
+Standing before the skull of Triceratops, looking him squarely in the
+face, one notices in front of each eye a thick guard of projecting bone,
+and while this must have interfered with vision directly ahead it must
+have also furnished protection for the eye. So long as Triceratops faced
+an adversary he must have been practically invulnerable, but as he was
+the largest animal of his time, upward of twenty-five feet in length, it
+is probable that his combats were mainly with those of his own kind and
+the subject of dispute some fair female upon whom two rival suitors had
+cast covetous eyes. What a sight it would have been to have seen two of
+these big brutes in mortal combat as they charged upon each other with
+all the impetus to be derived from ten tons of infuriate flesh! We may
+picture to ourselves horn clashing upon horn, or glancing from each bony
+shield until some skilful stroke or unlucky slip placed one combatant at
+the mercy of the other, and he went down before the blows of his
+adversary "as falls on Mount Alvernus a thunder-smitten oak."
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Moloch. A Modern Lizard that Surpasses the
+Stegosaurs in All but Size. _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+A pair of Triceratops horns in the National Museum bears witness to such
+encounters, for one is broken midway between tip and base; and that it
+was broken during life is evident from the fact that the stump is healed
+and rounded over, while the size of the horns shows that their owner
+reached a ripe old age.
+
+For, unlike man and the higher vertebrates, reptiles and fishes do not
+have a maximum standard of size which is soon reached and rarely
+exceeded, but continue to grow throughout life, so that the size of a
+turtle, a crocodile, or a Dinosaur tells something of the duration of
+its life.
+
+Before quitting Triceratops let us glance for a moment at its skeleton.
+Now among other things a skeleton is the solution of a problem in
+mechanics, and in Triceratops the head so dominates the rest of the
+structure that one might almost imagine the skull was made first and the
+body adjusted to it. The great head seems made not only for offence and
+defence; the spreading frill serves for the attachment of muscles to
+sustain the weight of the skull, while the work of the muscles is made
+easier by the fact that the frill reaches so far back of the junction of
+head with neck as to largely counterbalance the weight of the face and
+jaws. When we restored the skull of this animal it was found that the
+centre of gravity lay back of the eye. Several of the bones of the neck
+are united in one mass to furnish a firm attachment for the muscles that
+support and move the skull, but as the movements of the neck are already
+restricted by the overhanging frill, this loss of motion is no
+additional disadvantage.
+
+[Illustration: TRICERATOPS PRORSUS Marsh Fig. 22.--Skeleton of
+Triceratops.]
+
+To support all this weight of skull and body requires very massive
+legs, and as the fore legs are very short, this enables Triceratops to
+browse comfortably from the ground by merely lowering the front of the
+head.
+
+These forms we have been considering were the giants of the group, but a
+commoner species, Thespesius, though less in bulk than those just
+mentioned, was still of goodly proportions, for, as he stalked about,
+the top of his head was twelve feet from the ground.
+
+Thespesius and his kin seem to have been comparatively abundant, for
+they have a wide distribution, and many specimens, some almost perfect,
+have been discovered in this country and abroad. No less than
+twenty-nine Iguanodons, a European relative of Thespesius, were found in
+one spot in mining for coal at Bernissart, Belgium. Here, during long
+years of Cretaceous time, a river slowly cut its way through the
+coal-bearing strata to a depth of 750 feet, a depth almost twice as
+great as the deepest part of the gorge of Niagara, and then, this being
+accomplished, began the work of filling up the valley it had excavated.
+
+It was then a sluggish stream with marshy borders, a stream subject to
+frequent floods, when the water, turbid with mud and laden with sand,
+overflowed its banks, leaving them, as the waters subsided, covered
+thickly with mud. Here, amidst the luxuriant vegetation of a
+semi-tropical climate, lived and died the Iguanodons, and here the pick
+of the miner rescued them from their long entombment to form part of the
+treasures of the museum at Brussels.
+
+Like other reptiles, living and extinct, Thespesius was continually
+renewing his teeth, so that as fast as one tooth was worn out it was
+replaced by another, a point wherein Thespesius had a decided advantage
+over ourselves. On the other hand, as there was a reserve supply of
+something like 400 teeth in the lower jaw alone, what an opportunity for
+the toothache!
+
+And then we have a multitude of lesser Dinosaurs, including the active,
+predatory species with sharp claws and double-edged teeth. Megalosaurus,
+the first of the Dinosaurs to be really known, was one of these
+carnivorous species, and from our West comes a near relative,
+Ceratosaurus, the nose-horned lizard, a queer beast with tiny fore legs,
+powerful, sharp-clawed hind feet, and well-armed jaws. A most formidable
+foe he seems, the more that the hollow bones speak of active movements,
+and Professor Cope pictured him, or a near relative, vigorously engaged
+in combat with his fellows, or preying upon the huge but helpless
+herbivores of the marshes, leaping, biting, and tearing his enemy to
+pieces with tooth and claw.
+
+Professor Osborn, on the other hand, is inclined to consider him as a
+reptilian hyena, feeding upon carrion, although one can but feel that
+such an armament is not entirely in the interests of peace.
+
+Last, but by no means least, are the Stegosaurs, or plated lizards, for
+not only were they beasts of goodly size, but they were among the most
+singular of all known animals, singular even for Dinosaurs. They had
+diminutive heads, small fore legs, long tails armed on either side near
+the tip, with two pairs of large spines, while from these spines to the
+neck ran series of large, but thin, and sharp-edged plates standing
+on edge, so that their backs looked like the bottom of a boat provided
+with a number of little centreboards. Just how these plates were
+arranged is not decided beyond a peradventure, but while originally
+figured as having them in a single series down the back it seems much
+more probable that they formed parallel rows.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 23.--The Horned Ceratosaurus. A Carnivorous
+Dinosaur. _From a drawing by J. M. Gleeson._]
+
+The largest of these plates were two feet in height and length, and not
+more than an inch thick, except at the base, where they were enlarged
+and roughened to give a firm hold to the thick skin in which they were
+imbedded. Be it remembered, too, that these plates and spines were
+doubtless covered with horn, so that they were even longer in life than
+as we now see them. The tail spines varied in length, according to the
+species, from eight or nine inches to nearly three feet, and some of
+them have a diameter of six inches at the base. They were swung by a
+tail eight to ten feet long, and as a visitor was heard to remark, one
+wouldn't like to be about such an animal in fly time.
+
+Such were some of the strange and mighty animals that once roamed this
+continent from the valley of the Connecticut, where they literally left
+their footprints on the sands of time, to the Rocky Mountains, where the
+ancient lakes and rivers became cemeteries for the entombment of their
+bones.
+
+The labor of the collector has gathered their fossil remains from many a
+Western canyon, the skill of the preparator has removed them from their
+stony sepulchres and the study of the anatomist has restored them as
+they were in life.
+
+
+_REFERENCES._
+
+_Most of our large museums have on exhibition fine specimens of many
+Dinosaurs, comprising skulls, limbs, and large portions of their
+skeletons. The American Museum of Natural History, New York, has the
+largest and finest display. The first actual skeleton of a Dinosaur to
+be mounted in this country was the splendid Claosaurus at the Yale
+University Museum, where other striking pieces are also to be seen. The
+mounting of this Claosaurus, which is 29 feet long and 13 feet high,
+took an entire year. The United States National Museum is
+particularly rich in examples of the great, horned Triceratops, while
+the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, has the best Diplodocus. The Field
+Columbian Museum and the Universities of Wyoming and Colorado all have
+good collections._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Stegosaurus. An Armored Dinosaur of the
+Jurassic. _From a drawing by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+_The largest single bone of a Dinosaur is the thigh bone of a
+Brontosaurus in the Field Columbian Museum, this measuring 6 feet 8
+inches in length. The height of a complete hind leg in the American
+Museum of Natural History is 10 feet, while a single claw measures 6 by
+9 inches. The skeleton of Triceratops restored in papier-mache for the
+Pan-American Exposition measured 25 feet from tip of nose to end of tail
+and was 10 feet 6 inches to the top of the backbone over the hips, this
+being the highest point. The head in the United States National Museum
+used as a model is 5 feet 6 inches long in a straight line and 4 feet 3
+inches across the frill. There is a skull in the Yale University Museum
+even larger than this._
+
+_Articles relating to Dinosaurs are mostly technical in their nature and
+scattered through various scientific journals. The most accessible
+probably is "The Dinosaurs of North America," by Professor O. C. Marsh,
+published as part of the sixteenth annual report of the United States
+Geological Survey. This contains many figures of the skulls, bones, and
+entire skeletons of many Dinosaurs._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 25.--Skull of Ceratosaurus. _From a specimen in the
+United States National Museum._]
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+READING THE RIDDLES OF THE ROCKS
+
+    "_And the first Morning of Creation wrote
+    What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read._"
+
+
+It is quite possible that the reader may wish to know something of the
+manner in which the specimens described in these pages have been
+gathered, how we acquire our knowledge of Brontosaurus, Claosaurus, or
+any of the many other "sauruses," and how their restorations have been
+made.
+
+There was a time, not so very long ago, when fossils were looked upon as
+mere sports of Nature, and little attention paid to them; later their
+true nature was recognized, though they were merely gathered haphazard
+as occasion might offer. But now, and for many years past, the
+fossil-bearing rocks of many parts of the world have been systematically
+worked, and from the material thus obtained we have acquired a great
+deal of information regarding the inhabitants of the ancient world. This
+is particularly true of our own western country, where a vast amount of
+collecting has been done, although very much remains to be done in the
+matter of perfecting this knowledge, and hosts of new animals remain to
+be discovered. For this information we are almost as much indebted to
+the collector who has gathered the needed material, and the preparator
+whose patience and skill have made it available for study, as to the
+palaeontologist who has interpreted the meaning of the bones.
+
+To collect successfully demands not only a knowledge of the rocks in
+which fossils occur and of the localities where they are best exposed to
+view, but an eye quick to detect a piece of bone protruding from a rock
+or lying amongst the shale, and, above all, the ability to work a
+deposit to advantage after it has been found. The collector of living
+animals hies to regions where there is plenty for bird and beast to eat
+and drink, but the collector of extinct animals cares little for what is
+on the surface of the earth; his great desire is to see as much as
+possible of what may lie beneath. So the prospector in search of fossils
+betakes himself to some region where the ceaseless warfare waged by
+water against the dry land has seamed the face of the earth with
+countless gullies and canyons, or carved it into slopes and bluffs in
+which the edges of the bone-bearing strata are exposed to view, and
+along these he skirts, ever on the look-out for some projecting bit of
+bone. The country is an almost shadeless desert, burning hot by day,
+uncomfortably cool at night. Water is scarce, and when it can be found,
+often has little to commend it save wetness; but the collector is buoyed
+up through all this with the hope that he may discover some creature new
+to science that shall not only be bigger and uglier and stranger than
+any heretofore found, but shall be the long-sought form needed for the
+solution of some difficult problem in the history of the past.
+
+Now collecting is a lottery, differing from most lotteries, however, in
+that while some of the returns may be pretty small, there are few
+absolute blanks and some remarkably large prizes, and every collector
+hopes that it may fall to his lot to win one of these, and is willing to
+work long and arduously for the chance of obtaining it.
+
+It may give some idea of the chances to say that some years ago Dr.
+Wortman spent almost an entire season in the field without success, and
+then, at the eleventh hour, found the now famous skeleton of Phenacodus,
+or that a party from Princeton actually camped within 100 yards of a
+rich deposit of rare fossils and yet failed to discover it.
+
+Let us, however, suppose that the reconnaissance has been successful,
+and that an outcrop of bone has been found, serving like a tombstone
+carven with strange characters to indicate the burial-place of some
+primeval monster. Possibly Nature long ago rifled the grave, washing
+away much of the skeleton, and leaving little save the fragments visible
+on the surface; on the other hand, these pieces may form part of a
+complete skeleton, and there is no way to decide this important question
+save by actual excavation. The manner of disinterment varies, but much
+depends on whether the fossil lies in comparatively loose shale or is
+imbedded in the solid rock, whether the strata are level or dip downward
+into the hillside. If, unfortunately, this last is the case, it
+necessitates a careful shoring up of the excavation with props of
+cotton-wood or such boards as may have been brought along to box
+specimens, or it may even be necessary to run a short tunnel in order to
+get at some coveted bone. Should the specimen lie in shale, as is the
+case with most of the large reptiles that have been collected, much of
+that work may be done with pick and shovel; but if it is desirable or
+necessary to work in firm rock, drills and hammers, wedges, even powder,
+may be needed to rend from Nature her long-kept secrets. In any event, a
+detailed plan is made of the excavation, and each piece of bone or
+section of rock duly recorded therein by letter and number, so that
+later on the relation of the parts to one another may be known, or the
+various sections assembled in the work-room exactly as they lay in the
+quarry. Bones which lie in loose rock are often, one might say usually,
+more or less broken, and when a bone three, four, or even six feet
+long, weighing anywhere from 100 to 1,000 pounds, has been shattered to
+fragments the problem of removing it is no easy one. But here the skill
+of the collector comes into play to treat the fossil as a surgeon treats
+a fractured limb, to cover it with plaster bandages, and brace it with
+splints of wood or iron so that the specimen may not only be taken from
+the ground but endure in safety the coming journey of a thousand or more
+miles. For simpler cases or lighter objects strips of sacking, or even
+paper, applied with flour and water, suffice, or pieces of sacking
+soaked in thin plaster may be laid over the bone, first covering it with
+thin paper in order that the plaster jacket may simply stiffen and not
+adhere to it. Collecting has not always been carried on in this
+systematic manner, for the development of the present methods has been
+the result of years of experience; formerly there was a mere
+skimming-over of the surface in what Professor Marsh used to term the
+potato-gathering style, but now the effort is made to remove specimens
+intact, often imbedded in large masses of rock, in order that all parts
+may be preserved.
+
+We will take it for granted that our specimens have safely passed
+through all perils by land and water, road and rail; that they have been
+quarried, boxed, carted over a roadless country to the nearest railway,
+and have withstood 2,000 miles of jolting in a freight-car. The first
+step in reconstruction has been taken; the problem, now that the boxes
+are reposing on the work-room floor, is to make the blocks of stone give
+up the secrets they have guarded for ages, to free the bones from their
+enveloping matrix in order that they may tell us something of the life
+of the past. The method of doing this varies with the conditions under
+which the material has been gathered, and if from hard clay, chalk, or
+shale, the process, though tedious enough at best, is by no means so
+difficult as if the specimens are imbedded in solid rock. In this case
+the fragments from a given section of quarry must be assembled according
+to the plan which has been carefully made as the work of exhumation
+progressed, all pieces containing bone must be stuck together, and weak
+parts strengthened with gum or glue. Now the mass is attacked with
+hammer and chisel, and the surrounding matrix slowly and carefully cut
+away until the contained bone is revealed, a process much simpler and
+more expeditious in the telling than in the actuality; for the
+preparator may not use the heavy tools of the ordinary stone-cutter:
+sometimes an awl, or even a glover's needle, must suffice him, and the
+chips cut off are so small and such care must be taken not to injure the
+bone that the work is really tedious. This may, perhaps, be better
+appreciated by saying that to clean a single vertebra of such a huge
+Dinosaur as Diplodocus may require a month of continuous labor, and that
+a score of these big and complicated bones, besides others of simpler
+structure, are included in the backbone. The finished specimen weighs
+over 120 pounds, while as originally collected, with all the adherent
+rock, the weight was twice or thrice as great. Such a mass as this is
+comparatively small, and sometimes huge blocks are taken containing
+entire skulls or a number of bones, and not infrequently weighing a
+ton. The largest single specimen is a skull of Triceratops, collected by
+Mr. J. B. Hatcher, which weighed, when boxed, 3,650 pounds.
+
+Or, as the result of some mishap, or through the work of an
+inexperienced collector, a valuable specimen may arrive in the shape of
+a box full of irregular fragments of stone compared with which a
+dissected map or an old-fashioned Chinese puzzle is simplicity itself,
+and one may spend hours looking for some piece whose proper location
+gives the clew to an entire section, and days, even, may be consumed
+before the task is completed. While this not only tries the patience,
+but the eyes as well, there is, nevertheless, a fascination about this
+work of fashioning a bone out of scores, possibly hundreds, of
+fragments, and watching the irregular bits of stone shaping themselves
+into a mosaic that forms a portion of some creature, possibly quite new
+to science, and destined to bear a name as long as itself. And thus,
+after many days of toil, the bone that millions of years before sank
+into the mud of some old lake-bottom or was buried in the sandy shoals
+of an ancient river, is brought to light once more to help tell the tale
+of the creatures of the past.
+
+One bone might convey a great deal of information; on the other hand it
+might reveal very little; for, while it is very painful to say so, the
+popular impression that it is possible to reconstruct an animal from a
+single bone, or tell its size and habits from a tooth is but partially
+correct, and sometimes "the eminent scientist" has come to grief even
+with a great many bones at his disposal. Did not one of the ablest
+anatomists describe and figure the hip-bones of a Dinosaur as its
+shoulder-blade, and another, equally able, reconstruct a reptile "hind
+side before," placing the head on the tail! This certainly sounds absurd
+enough; but just as absurd mistakes are made by men in other walks of
+life, often with far more deplorable results.
+
+Before passing to the restoration of the exterior of animals it may be
+well to say something of the manner in which the skeleton of an extinct
+animal may be reconstructed and the meaning of its various parts
+interpreted. For the adjustment of the muscles is dependent on the
+structure of the skeleton, and putting on the muscles means blocking out
+the form, details of external appearance being supplied by the skin and
+its accessories of hair, scales, or horns. Let us suppose in the present
+instance that we are dealing with one of the great reptiles known as
+Triceratops whose remains are among the treasures of the National Museum
+at Washington, for the reconstruction of the big beast well illustrates
+the methods of the palaeontologist and also the troubles by which he is
+beset. Moreover, this is not a purely imaginary case, but one that is
+very real, for the skeleton of this animal which was shown at Buffalo
+was restored in papier-mache in exactly the manner indicated. We have a
+goodly number of bones, but by no means an entire skeleton, and yet we
+wish to complete the skeleton and incidentally to form some idea of the
+creature's habits. Now we can interpret the past only by a knowledge of
+the present, and it is by carefully studying the skeletons of the
+animals of to-day that we can learn to read the meaning of the symbols
+of bones left by the animals of a million yesterdays. Thus we find that
+certain characters distinguish the bone of a mammal from that of a bird,
+a reptile, or a fish, and these in turn from one another, and this
+constitutes the A B C of comparative anatomy. And, in a like manner, the
+bones of the various divisions of these main groups have to a greater or
+less extent their own distinguishing characteristics, so that by first
+comparing the bones of extinct animals with those of creatures that are
+now living we are enabled to recognize their nearest existing relative,
+and then by comparing them with one another we learn the relations they
+bore in the ancient world. But it must be borne in mind that some of the
+early beasts were so very different from those of to-day that until
+pretty much their entire structure was known there was nothing with
+which to compare odd bones. Had but a single incomplete specimen of
+Triceratops come to light we should be very much in the dark concerning
+him; and although remains of some thirty individuals have been
+discovered, these have been so imperfect that we are very far from
+having all the information we need. A great part of the head, with its
+formidable looking horns, is present, and although the nose is gone, we
+know from other specimens that it, too, was armed with a knob, or horn,
+and that the skull ended in a beak, something like that of a snapping
+turtle, though formed by a separate and extra bone; similarly the end of
+the lower jaw is lacking, but we may be pretty certain that it ended in
+a beak, to match that of the skull. The large leg-bones of our specimen
+are mostly represented, for these being among the more solid parts of
+the skeleton are more frequently preserved than any others, and though
+some are from one side and some from another, this matters not. If the
+hind legs were disproportionately long it would indicate that our animal
+often or habitually walked erect, but as there is only difference enough
+between the fore and hind limbs to enable Triceratops to browse
+comfortably from the ground we would naturally place him on all fours,
+even were the skull not so large as to make the creature too top-heavy
+for any other mode of locomotion. Were the limbs very small in
+comparison with the other bones, it would obviously mean that their
+owner passed his life in the water. For a skeleton has a twofold
+meaning, it is the best, the most enduring, testimony we have as to an
+animal's place in nature and the relationships it sustains to the
+creatures that lived with it, before it, and after it. More than this, a
+skeleton is the solution of a problem in mechanics, the problem of
+carrying a given weight and of adaptation to a given mode of life. Thus
+the skeleton varies according as a creature dwells on land, in the
+water, or in the air, and according as it feeds on grass or preys upon
+its fellows.
+
+And so the mechanics of a skeleton afford us a clew to the habits of the
+living animal. Something, too, may be gathered from the structure of the
+leg-bones, for solid bones mean either a sluggish animal or a creature
+of more or less aquatic habits, while hollow bones emphatically declare
+a land animal, and an active one at that; and this, in the case of the
+Dinosaurs, hints at predatory habits, the ability to catch and eat their
+defenceless and more sluggish brethren. A claw, or, better yet, a
+tooth, may confirm or refute this hint; for a blunt claw could not be
+used in tearing prey limb from limb, nor would a double-edged tooth,
+made for rending flesh, serve for champing grass.
+
+But few bones of the feet, and especially the fore feet, are present,
+these smaller parts of the skeleton having been washed away before the
+ponderous frame was buried in the sand, and the best that can be done is
+to follow the law of probabilities and put three toes on the hind foot
+and five on the fore, two of these last without claws. The single blunt
+round claw among our bones shows, as do the teeth, that Triceratops was
+herbivorous; it also pointed a little downward, and this tells that in
+the living animal the sole of the foot was a thick, soft pad, somewhat
+as it is in the elephant and rhinoceros, and that the toes were not
+entirely free from one another. There are less than a dozen vertebrae and
+still fewer ribs, besides half a barrelful of pieces, from which to
+reconstruct a backbone twenty feet long. That the ribs are part from one
+side and part from another matters no more than it did in the case of
+the leg-bones; but the backbone presents a more difficult problem,
+since the pieces are not like so many checkers--all made after one
+pattern--but each has an individuality of its own. The total number of
+vertebrae must be guessed at (perhaps it would sound better to say
+estimated, but it really means the same), and knowing that some sections
+are from the front part of the vertebral column and some from the back,
+we must fill in the gaps as best we may. The ribs offer a little aid in
+this task, giving certain details of the vertebrae, while those in turn
+tell something about the adjoining parts of the ribs. We finish our
+Triceratops with a tail of moderate length, as indicated by the rapid
+taper of the few vertebrae available, and from these we gather, too, that
+in life the tail was round, and not flattened, and that it neither
+served for swimming nor for a balancing pole. And so, little by little,
+have been pieced together the fragments from which we have derived our
+knowledge of the past, and thus has the palaeontologist read the riddles
+of the rocks.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Triceratops, He of the Three-horned Face. _From
+a statuette by Charles R. Knight._]
+
+To make these dry bones live again, to clothe them with flesh and
+reconstruct the creature as he was or may have been in life, is, to
+be honest, very largely guesswork, though to make a guess that shall
+come anywhere near the mark not only demands a thorough knowledge of
+anatomy--for the basis of all restoration must be the skeleton--but
+calls for more than a passing acquaintance with the external appearance
+of living animals. And while there is nothing in the bones to tell how
+an animal is, or was, clad, they will at least show to what group the
+creature belonged, and, that known, there are certain probabilities in
+the case. A bird, for example, would certainly be clad in feathers.
+Going a little farther, we might be pretty sure that the feathers of a
+water-fowl would be thick and close; those of strictly terrestrial
+birds, such as the ostrich and other flightless forms, lax and long.
+These as general propositions; of course, in special cases, one might
+easily come to grief, as in dealing with birds like penguins, which are
+particularly adapted for an aquatic life, and have the feathers highly
+modified. These birds depend upon their fat, and not on their feathers,
+for warmth, and so their feathers have become a sort of cross between
+scales and hairs. Hair and fur belong to mammals only, although these
+creatures show much variety in their outer covering. The thoroughly
+marine whales have discarded furs and adopted a smooth and slippery
+skin,[9] well adapted to movement through the water, relying for warmth
+on a thick undershirt of blubber. The earless seals that pass much of
+their time on the ice have just enough hair to keep them from absolute
+contact with it, warmth again being provided for by blubber. The fur
+seals, which for several months in the year dwell largely on land, have
+a coat of fur and hair, although warmth is mostly furnished, or rather
+kept in, by fat.
+
+[9] _The reader is warned that this is a mere figure of speech, for, of
+course, the process of adaptation to surroundings is passive, not
+active, although there is a most unfortunate tendency among writers on
+evolution, and particularly on mimicry, to speak of it as active. The
+writer believes that no animal in the first stages of mimicry,
+consciously mimics or endeavors to resemble another animal or any part
+of its surroundings, but a habit at first accidental may in time become
+more or less conscious._
+
+No reptile, therefore, would be covered with feathers, neither, judging
+from those we know to-day, would they be clad in fur or hair; but, such
+coverings being barred out, there remain a great variety of plates and
+scales to choose from. Folds and frills, crests and dewlaps, like
+beauty, are but skin deep, and, being thus superficial, ordinarily leave
+no trace of their former presence, and in respect to them the
+reconstructor must trust to his imagination, with the law of
+probabilities as a check rein to his fancy. This law would tell us that
+such ornaments must not be so placed as to be in the way, and that while
+there would be a possibility--one might even say probability--of the
+great, short-headed, iguana-like Dinosaurs having dewlaps, that there
+would be no great likelihood of their possessing ruffs such as that of
+the Australian Chlamydosaurus (mantled lizard) to flap about their ears.
+Even Stegosaurus, with his bizarre array of great plates and spines,
+kept them on his back, out of the way. Such festal ornamentation would,
+however, more likely be found in small, active creatures, the larger
+beasts contenting themselves with plates and folds.
+
+Spines and plates usually leave some trace of their existence, for they
+consist of a super-structure of skin or horn, built on a foundation of
+bone; and while even horn decomposes too quickly to "petrify," the bone
+will become fossilized and changed into enduring stone. But while this
+affords a pretty sure guide to the general shape of the investing horn,
+it does not give all the details, and there may have been ridges and
+furrows and sculpturing that we know not of.
+
+Knowing, then, what the probabilities are, we have some guide to the
+character of the covering that should be placed on an animal, and if we
+may not be sure as to what should be done, we may be pretty certain what
+should not.
+
+For example, to depict a Dinosaur with smooth, rubbery hide walking
+about on dry land would be to violate the probabilities, for only such
+exclusively aquatic creatures as the whales among mammals, and the
+salamanders among batrachians, are clothed in smooth, shiny skin. There
+might, however, be reason to suspect that a creature largely aquatic in
+its habits did occasionally venture on land, as, for instance, when
+vertebrae that seem illy adapted for carrying the weight of a land animal
+are found in company with huge limb-bones and massive feet we may feel
+reasonably certain that their owner passed at least a portion of his
+time on _terra firma_.
+
+So much for the probabilities as to the covering of animals known to us
+only by their fossil remains; but it is often possible to go beyond
+this, and to state certainly how they were clad. For while the chances
+are small that any trace of the covering of an extinct animal, other
+than bony plates, will be preserved, Nature does now and then seem to
+have relented, and occasionally some animal settled to rest where it was
+so quickly and quietly covered with fine mud that the impression of
+small scales, feathers, or even smooth skin, was preserved; curiously
+enough, there seems to be scarcely any record of the imprint of hair.
+Then, too, it is to be remembered that while the chances were very much
+against such preservation, in the thousands or millions of times
+creatures died the millionth chance might come uppermost.
+
+Silhouettes of those marine reptiles, the Ichthyosaurs, have been found,
+probably made by the slow carbonization of animal matter, showing not
+only the form of the body and tail, but revealing the existence of an
+unsuspected back fin. And yet these animals were apparently clad in a
+skin as thin and smooth as that of a whale. Impressions of feathers were
+known long before the discovery of Archaeopteryx; a few have been found
+in the Green River and Florissant shales of Wyoming, and a Hesperornis
+in the collection of the State University of Kansas shows traces of the
+existence of long, soft feathers on the legs and very clear imprints of
+the scales and reticulated skin that covered the tarsus. From the Chalk
+of Kansas, too, came the example of Tylosaur, showing that the back of
+this animal was decorated with the crest shown in Mr. Knight's
+restoration, one not unlike that of the modern iguana. From the Laramie
+sandstone of Montana Mr. Hatcher and Mr. Butler have obtained the
+impressions of portions of the skin of the great Dinosaur, Thespesius,
+which show that the covering of this animal consisted largely, if not
+entirely, of small, irregularly hexagonal horny scutes, slightly
+thickened in the centre. The quarries of lithographic stone at
+Solenhofen have yielded a few specimens of flying reptiles,
+pterodactyls, which not only verify the correctness of the inference
+that these creatures possessed membranous wings, like the bats, but show
+the exact shape, and it was sometimes very curious, of this membrane.
+And each and all of these wonderfully preserved specimens serve both to
+check and guide the restorer in his task of clothing the animal as it
+was in life.
+
+And all this help is needed, for it is an easy matter to make a
+wide-sweeping deduction, apparently resting on a good basis of fact, and
+yet erroneous. Remains of the Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros, found in
+Siberia and Northern Europe, were thought to indicate that at the period
+when these animals lived the climate was mild, a very natural inference,
+since the elephants and rhinoceroses we now know are all inhabitants of
+tropical climes. But the discovery of more or less complete specimens
+makes it evident that the climate was not particularly mild; the
+animals were simply adapted to it; instead of being naked like their
+modern relatives, they were dressed for the climate in a woolly
+covering. We think of the tiger as prowling through the jungles of
+India, but he ranges so far north that in some localities this beast
+preys upon reindeer, which are among the most northern of large mammals,
+and there the tiger is clad in fairly thick fur.
+
+When we come to coloring a reconstructed animal we have absolutely no
+guide, unless we assume that the larger a creature the more soberly will
+it be colored. The great land animals of to-day, the elephant and
+rhinoceros, to say nothing of the aquatic hippopotamus, are very dully
+colored, and while this sombre coloration is to-day a protection,
+rendering these animals less easily seen by man than they otherwise
+would be, yet at the time this color was developing man was not nor were
+there enemies sufficiently formidable to menace the race of elephantine
+creatures.
+
+For where mere size furnishes sufficient protection one would hardly
+expect to find protective coloration as well, unless indeed a creature
+preyed upon others, when it might be advantageous to enable a predatory
+animal to steal upon its prey.
+
+Color often exists (or is supposed to) as a sexual characteristic, to
+render the male of a species attractive to, or readily recognizable by,
+the female, but in the case of large animals mere size is quite enough
+to render them conspicuous, and possibly this may be one of the factors
+in the dull coloration of large animals.
+
+So while a green and yellow Triceratops would undoubtedly have been a
+conspicuous feature in the Cretaceous landscape, from what we know of
+existing animals it seems best to curb our fancy and, so far as large
+Dinosaurs are concerned, employ the colors of a Rembrandt rather than
+those of a sign painter.
+
+Aids, or at least hints, to the coloration of extinct animals are to be
+found in the coloration of the young of various living species, for as
+the changes undergone by the embryo are in a measure an epitome of the
+changes undergone by a species during its evolution, so the brief color
+phases or markings of the young are considered to represent the
+ordinary coloring of distant ancestors. Young thrushes are spotted,
+young ostriches and grebes are irregularly striped, young lions are
+spotted, and in restoring the early horse, or Hyracothere, Professor
+Osborn had the animal represented as faintly striped, for the reason
+that zebras, the wild horses of to-day, are striped, and because the
+ass, which is a primitive type of horse, is striped over the shoulders,
+these being hints that the earlier horse-like forms were also striped.
+
+Thus just as the skeleton of a Dinosaur may be a composite structure,
+made up of the bones of a dozen individuals, and these in turn mosaics
+of many fragments, so may the semblance of the living animal be based on
+a fact, pieced out with a probability and completed by a bit of theory.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_There is a large series of restorations of extinct animals, prepared by
+Mr. Charles R. Knight, under the direction of Professor Osborn, in the
+Hall of Palaeontology of the American Museum of Natural History, and
+these are later to be reproduced and issued in portfolio form._
+
+_Should the reader visit Princeton, he may see in the museum there a
+number of B. Waterhouse Hawkins's creations--creations is the proper
+word--which are of interest as examples of the early work in this line._
+
+_The "Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1900" contains an
+article on "The Restoration of Extinct Animals," pages 479-492, which
+includes a number of plates showing the progress that has been made in
+this direction._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 27.--A Hint of Buried Treasures.]
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+FEATHERED GIANTS
+
+    _"There were giants in the earth in those days."_
+
+
+Nearly every group of animals has its giants, its species which tower
+above their fellows as Goliath of Gath stood head and shoulders above
+the Philistine hosts; and while some of these are giants only in
+comparison with their fellows, belonging to families whose members are
+short of stature, others are sufficiently great to be called giants
+under any circumstances. Some of these giants live to-day, some have but
+recently passed away, and some ceased to be long ages before man trod
+this earth. The most gigantic of mammals--the whales--still survive, and
+the elephant of to-day suffers but little in comparison with the
+mammoth of yesterday; the monstrous Dinosaurs, greatest of all
+reptiles--greatest, in fact, of all animals that have walked the
+earth--flourished thousands upon thousands of years ago. As for birds,
+some of the giants among them are still living, some existed long
+geologic periods ago, and a few have so recently vanished from the scene
+that their memory still lingers amid the haze of tradition. The best
+known among these, as well as the most recent in point of time, are the
+Moas of New Zealand, first brought to notice by the Rev. W. Colenso,
+later on Bishop of New Zealand, one of the many missionaries to whom
+Science is under obligations. Early in 1838, Bishop Colenso, while on a
+missionary visit to the East Cape region, heard from the natives of
+Waiapu tales of a monstrous bird, called Moa, having the head of a man,
+that inhabited the mountain-side some eighty miles away. This mighty
+bird, the last of his race, was said to be attended by two equally huge
+lizards that kept guard while he slept, and on the approach of man
+wakened the Moa, who immediately rushed upon the intruders and trampled
+them to death. None of the Maoris had seen this bird, but they had seen
+and somewhat irreverently used for making parts of their fishing
+tackle, bones of its extinct relatives, and these bones they declared to
+be as large as those of an ox.
+
+About the same time another missionary, the Rev. Richard Taylor, found a
+bone ascribed to the Moa, and met with a very similar tradition among
+the natives of a near-by district, only, as the foot of the rainbow
+moves away as we move toward it, in his case the bird was said to dwell
+in quite a different locality from that given by the natives of East
+Cape. While, however, the Maoris were certain that the Moa still lived,
+and to doubt its existence was little short of a crime, no one had
+actually seen it, and as time went on and the bird still remained unseen
+by any explorer, hope became doubt and doubt certainty, until it even
+became a mooted question whether such a bird had existed within the past
+ten centuries, to say nothing of having lived within the memory of man.
+
+But if we do not know the living birds, their remains are scattered
+broadcast over hillside and plain, concealed in caves, buried in the mud
+of swamps, and from these we gain a good idea of their size and
+structure, while chance has even made it possible to know something of
+their color and general appearance. This chance was the discovery of a
+few specimens, preserved in exceptionally dry caves on the South Island,
+which not only had some of the bones still united by ligaments, but
+patches of skin clinging to the bones, and bearing numerous feathers of
+a chestnut color tipped with white. These small, straggling, rusty
+feathers are not much to look at, but when we reflect that they have
+been preserved for centuries without any care whatever, while the
+buffalo bugs have devoured our best Smyrna rugs in spite of all possible
+precautions, our respect for them increases.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Relics of the Moa.]
+
+From the bones we learn that there were a great many kinds of Moas,
+twenty at least, ranging in size from those little larger than a turkey
+to that giant among giants, _Dinornis maximus_, which stood at least ten
+feet high,[10] or two feet higher than the largest ostrich, and may
+well claim the distinction of being the tallest of all known birds. We
+also learn from the bones that not only were the Moas flightless, but
+that many of them were absolutely wingless, being devoid even of such
+vestiges of wings as we find in the Cassowary or Apteryx. But if Nature
+deprived these birds of wings, she made ample amends in the matter of
+legs, those of some species, the Elephant-footed Moa, _Pachyornis
+elephantopus_, for example, being so massively built as to cause one to
+wonder what the owner used them for, although the generally accepted
+theory is that they were used for scratching up the roots of ferns on
+which the Moas are believed to have fed. And if a blow from an irate
+ostrich is sufficient to fell a man, what must have been the kicking
+power of an able-bodied Moa? Beside this bird the ostrich would appear
+as slim and graceful as a gazelle beside a prize ox.
+
+[10] _The height of the Moas, and even of some species of AEpyornis, is
+often stated to be twelve or fourteen feet, but such a height can only
+be obtained by placing the skeleton in a wholly unnatural attitude._
+
+The Moas were confined to New Zealand, some species inhabiting the North
+Island, some the South, very few being common to both, and from these
+peculiarities of distribution geologists deduce that at some early
+period in the history of the earth the two islands formed one, that
+later on the land subsided, leaving the islands separated by a strait,
+and that since this subsidence there has been sufficient time for the
+development of the species peculiar to each island. Although Moas were
+still numerous when man made his appearance in this part of the world,
+the large deposits of their bones indicate that they were on the wane,
+and that natural causes had already reduced the feathered population of
+these islands. A glacial period is believed to have wrought their
+destruction, and in one great morass, abounding in springs, their bones
+occur in such enormous numbers, layer upon layer, that it is thought the
+birds sought the place where the flowing springs might afford their feet
+at least some respite from the biting cold, and there perished miserably
+by thousands.
+
+What Nature spared man finished, and legends of Moa hunts and Moa feasts
+still lingered among the Maoris when the white man came and began in
+turn the extermination of the Maori. The theory has been advanced, with
+much to support it, that the big birds were eaten off the face of the
+earth by an earlier race than the Maoris, and that after the extirpation
+of the Moas the craving for flesh naturally led to cannibalism. But by
+whomsoever the destruction was wrought, the result was the same, the
+habitat of these feathered giants knew them no longer, while multitudes
+of charred bones, interspersed with fragments of egg-shells, bear
+testimony to former barbaric feasts.
+
+It is a far cry from New Zealand to Madagascar, but thither must we go,
+for that island was, pity we cannot say is, inhabited by a race of giant
+birds from whose eggs it has been thought may have been hatched the Roc
+of Sindbad. Arabian tales, as we all know, locate the Roc either in
+Madagascar or in some adjacent island to the north and east, and it is
+far from unlikely that legends of the AEpyornis, backed by the
+substantial proof of its enormous eggs, may have been the slight
+foundation of fact whereon the story-teller erected his structure of
+fiction. True, the Roc of fable was a gigantic bird of prey capable of
+bearing away an elephant in its talons, while the AEpyornis has shed its
+wings and shrunk to dimensions little larger than an ostrich, but this
+is the inevitable result of closer acquaintance and the application of a
+two-foot rule.
+
+Like the Moa the AEpyornis seems to have lived in tradition long after it
+became extinct, for a French history of Madagascar, published as early
+as 1658 makes mention of a large bird, or kind of ostrich, said to
+inhabit the southern end of the island. Still, in spite of bones having
+been found that bear evident traces of the handiwork of man, it is
+possible that this and other reports were due to the obvious necessity
+of having some bird to account for the presence of the eggs.
+
+The actual introduction of the AEpyornis to science took place in 1834,
+when a French traveller sent Jules Verreaux, the ornithologist, a sketch
+of a huge egg, saying that he had seen two of that size, one sawed in
+twain to make bowls, the other, traversed by a stick, serving in the
+preparation of rice uses somewhat in contrast with the proverbial
+fragility of egg-shells. A little later another traveller procured some
+fragments of egg-shells, but it was not until 1851 that any entire eggs
+were obtained, when two were secured, and with a few bones sent to
+France, where Geoffroy St. Hilaire bestowed upon them the name of
+_AEpyornis maximus_ (the greatest lofty bird). Maximus the eggs remain,
+for they still hold the record for size; but so far as the bird that is
+supposed to have laid them is concerned, the name was a little
+premature, for other and larger species subsequently came to hand.
+Between the AEpyornithes and the Moas Science has had a hard time, for
+the supply of big words was not large enough to go around, and some had
+to do duty twice. In the way of generic names we have Dinornis, terrible
+bird; AEpyornis, high bird; Pachyornis, stout bird; and Brontornis,
+thunder bird, while for specific names there are robustus, maximus,
+titan; gravis, heavy; immanis, enormous; crassus, stout; ingens, great;
+and elephantopus, elephant-footed--truly a goodly array of
+large-sounding words. But to return to the big eggs! Usually we look
+upon those of the ostrich as pretty large, but an ostrich egg measures
+4-1/2 by 6 inches, while that of the AEpyornis is 9 by 13 inches; or, to
+put it another way, it would hold the contents of six ostrichs' eggs, or
+one hundred and forty-eight hens' eggs, or thirty thousand humming
+birds' eggs; and while this is very much smaller than a waterbutt, it is
+still as large as a bucket, and one or two such eggs might suffice to
+make an omelet for Gargantua himself.
+
+The size of an egg is no safe criterion of the size of the bird that
+laid it, for a large bird may lay a small egg, or a small bird a large
+one. Comparing the egg of the great Moa with that of our AEpyornis one
+might think the latter much the larger bird, say twelve feet in height,
+when the facts in the case are that while there was no great difference
+in the weight of the two, that difference, and a superiority of at least
+two feet in height, are in favor of the bird that laid the smaller egg.
+The record of large eggs, however, belongs to the Apteryx, a New Zealand
+bird smaller than a hen, though distantly related to the Moas, which
+lays an egg about one-third of its own weight, measuring 3 by 5 inches;
+perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the bird lays but two.
+
+Although most of the eggs of these big birds that have been found have
+literally been unearthed from the muck of swamps, now and then one comes
+to light in a more interesting manner as, for example, when a perfect
+egg of AEpyornis was found afloat after a hurricane, bobbing serenely up
+and down with the waves near St. Augustine's Bay, or when an egg of the
+Moa was exhumed from an ancient Maori grave, where for years it had lain
+unharmed, safely clasped between the skeleton fingers of the occupant.
+So far very few of these huge eggs have made their way to this country,
+and the only egg of AEpyornis now on this side of the water is the
+property of a private individual.
+
+Most recent in point of discovery, but oldest in point of time, are the
+giant birds from Patagonia, which are burdened with the name of
+Phororhacidae, a name that originated in an error, although the error may
+well be excused. The first fragment of one of these great birds to come
+to light was a portion of the lower jaw, and this was so massive, so
+un-bird-like, that the finder dubbed it _Phororhacos_, and so it must
+remain.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Eggs of Feathered Giants, AEpyornis, Ostrich,
+Moa, Compared with a Hen's Egg.]
+
+It is a pity that all the large names were used up before this group of
+birds was discovered, and it is particularly unfortunate that Dinornis,
+terrible bird, was applied to the root-eating Moas, for these Patagonian
+birds, with their massive limbs, huge heads and hooked beaks, were truly
+worthy of such a name; and although in nowise related to the eagles,
+they may in habit have been terrestrial birds of prey. Not all the
+members of this family are giants, for as in other groups, some are big
+and some little, but the largest among them might be styled the Daniel
+Lambert of the feathered race. _Brontornis_, for example, the thunder
+bird, or as the irreverent translate it, the thundering big bird, had
+leg-bones larger than those of an ox, the drumstick measuring 30 inches
+in length by 2-1/2 inches in diameter, or 4-1/4 inches across the ends,
+while the tarsus, or lower bone of the leg to which the toes are
+attached, was 16-1/2 inches long and 5-1/2 inches wide where the toes
+join on. Bear this in mind the next time you see a large turkey, or
+compare these bones with those of an ostrich: but lest you may forget,
+it may be said that the same bone of a fourteen-pound turkey is 5-1/2
+inches long, and one inch wide at either end, while that of an ostrich
+measures 19 inches long and 2 inches across the toes, or 3 at the upper
+end.
+
+If Brontornis was a heavy-limbed bird, he was not without near rivals
+among the Moas, while the great Phororhacos, one of his contemporaries,
+was not only nearly as large, but quite unique in build. Imagine a bird
+seven or eight feet in height from the sole of his big, sharp-clawed
+feet, to the top of his huge head, poise this head on a neck as thick as
+that of a horse, arm it with a beak as sharp as an icepick and almost as
+formidable, and you have a fair idea of this feathered giant of the
+ancient pampas. The head indeed was truly colossal for that of a bird,
+measuring 23 inches in length by 7 in depth, while that of the racehorse
+Lexington, and he was a good-sized horse, measures 22 inches long by
+5-1/2 inches deep. The depth of the jaw is omitted because we wish to
+make as good a case as possible for the bird, and the jaw of a horse is
+so deep as to give him an undue advantage in that respect.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Skull of Phororhacos Compared with that of the
+Race-horse Lexington.]
+
+We can only speculate on the food of these great birds, and for aught we
+know to the contrary they may have caught fish, fed upon carrion, or
+used their powerful feet and huge beaks for grubbing roots; but if they
+were not more or less carnivorous, preying upon such reptiles, mammals
+and other birds as came within reach, then nature apparently made a
+mistake in giving them such a formidable equipment of beak and claw. So
+far as habits go we might be justified in calling them cursorial birds
+of prey.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 31.--Leg of a Horse Compared with that of the Giant
+Moa.]
+
+We really know very little about these Patagonian giants, but they are
+interesting not only from their great size and astounding skulls, but
+because of the early age (Miocene) at which they lived and because in
+spite of their bulk they are in nowise related to the ostriches, but
+belong near the heron family. As usual, we have no idea why they became
+extinct, but in this instance man is guiltless, for they lived and died
+long before he made his appearance, and the ever-convenient hypothesis
+"change of climate" may be responsible for their disappearance.
+
+Something, perhaps, remains to be said concerning the causes which seem
+to have led to the development of these giant birds, as well as the
+reasons for their flightless condition and peculiar distribution, for it
+will be noticed that, with the exception of the African and South
+American ostriches the great flightless birds as a rule are, and were,
+confined to uninhabited or sparsely populated islands, and this is
+equally true of the many small, but equally flightless birds. It is a
+seemingly harsh law of nature that all living beings shall live in a
+more or less active struggle with each other and with their
+surroundings, and that those creatures which possess some slight
+advantage over their fellows in the matter of speed, or strength, or
+ability to adapt themselves to surrounding conditions, shall prosper at
+the expense of the others. In the power of flight, birds have a great
+safeguard against changes of climate with their accompanying variations
+in the supply of food, and, to a lesser extent, against their various
+enemies, including man. This power of flight, acquired early in their
+geological history, has enabled birds to spread over the length and
+breadth of the globe as no other group of animals has done, and to
+thrive under the most varying conditions, and it would seem that if this
+power were lost it must sooner or later work harm. Now to-day we find no
+great wingless birds in thickly populated regions, or where beasts of
+prey abound; the ostriches roam the desert wastes of Arabia, Africa and
+South America where men are few and savage beasts scarce, and against
+these is placed a fleetness of foot inherited from ancestors who
+acquired it before man was. The heavy cassowaries dwell in the thinly
+inhabited, thickly wooded islands of Malaysia, where again there are no
+large carnivores and where the dense vegetation is some safeguard
+against man; the emu comes from the Australian plains, where also there
+are no four-footed enemies[11] and where his ancestors dwelt in peace
+before the advent of man. And the same things are true of the Moas, the
+AEpyornithes, the flightless birds of Patagonia, the recent dodo of
+Mauritius and the solitaire of Rodriguez, each and all of which
+flourished in places where there were no men and practically no other
+enemies. Hence we deduce that absence of enemies is the prime factor in
+the existence of flightless birds,[12] although presence of food is an
+essential, while isolation, or restriction to a limited area, plays an
+important part by keeping together those birds, or that race of birds,
+whose members show a tendency to disuse their wings. It will be seen
+that such combinations of circumstances will most naturally be found on
+islands whose geological history is such that they have had no
+connection with adjacent continents, or such a very ancient connection
+that they were not then peopled with beasts of prey, while subsequently
+their distance from other countries has prevented them from receiving
+such population by accident in recent times and has also retarded the
+arrival of man.
+
+[11] _The dingo, or native dog, is not forgotten, but, like man, it is a
+comparatively recent animal._
+
+[12] _Note that in Tasmania, which is very near Australia, both in space
+and in the character of its animals, there are two carnivorous mammals,
+the Tasmanian "Wolf" and the Tasmanian Devil, and no flightless birds._
+
+Once established, flightlessness and size play into one another's hands;
+the flightless bird has no limit placed on its size[13] while granted a
+food supply and immunity from man; the larger the bird the less the
+necessity for wings to escape from four-footed foes. So long as the
+climate was favorable and man absent, the big, clumsy bird might thrive,
+but upon the coming of man, or in the face of any unfavorable change of
+climate, he would be at a serious disadvantage and hence whenever either
+of these two factors has been brought to bear against them the feathered
+giants have vanished.
+
+[13] _While we do not know the limit of size to a flying creature, none
+has as yet been found whose wings would spread over twenty feet from tip
+to tip, and it is evident that wings larger than this would demand great
+strength for their manipulation._
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_There is a fine collection of mounted skeletons of various species of
+Moas in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Mass., and
+another in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. A few
+_other skeletons and numerous bones are to be found in other
+institutions, but the author is not aware of any egg being in this
+country. Specimens of the AEpyornis are rare in this country, but Mr.
+Robert Gilfort, of Orange, N.J., is the possessor of a very fine egg. A
+number of eggs have been sold in London, the prices ranging from L200
+down to L42, this last being much less than prices paid for eggs of the
+great auk. But then, the great auk is somewhat of a fad, and there are
+just enough eggs in existence to bring one into the market every little
+while. Besides, the number of eggs of the great auk is a fixed quantity,
+while no one knows how many more of AEpyornis remain to be discovered in
+the swamps of Madagascar. No specimens of the gigantic Patagonian birds
+are now in this country, but a fine example of one of the smaller forms,
+Pelycornis, including the only breast-bone yet found, is in the Museum
+of Princeton University._
+
+_The largest known tibia of a Moa, the longest bird-bone known, is in
+the collection of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand; it
+is 3 feet 3 inches long. This, however, is exceptional, the measurements
+of the leg-bones of an ordinary Dinornis maximus being as follows:
+Femur, 18 inches; tibia, 32 inches; tarsus, 19 inches, a total of 5 feet
+9 inches. The egg measures 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches._
+
+_There is plenty of literature, and very interesting literature,
+about the Moas, but, unfortunately, the best of it is not always
+accessible, being contained in the "New Zealand Journal of Science" and
+the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute." The volume of
+"Transactions" for 1893, being vol. xxvi., contains a very full list of
+articles relating to the Moas, compiled by Mr. A. Hamilton; it will be
+found to commence on page 229. There is a good article on Moa in
+Newton's "Dictionary of Birds," a book that should be in every library._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 32.--The Three Giants, Phororhacos, Moa, Ostrich.]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE
+
+    "_Said the little Eohippus
+      I am going to be a horse
+    And on my middle finger-nails
+      To run my earthly course._"
+
+
+The American whose ancestors came over in the "Mayflower" has a proper
+pride in the length of the line of his descent. The Englishman whose
+genealogical tree sprang up at the time of William the Conqueror has, in
+its eight centuries of growth, still larger occasion for pluming himself
+on the antiquity of his family. But the pedigree of even the latter is a
+thing of yesterday when compared with that of the horse, whose family
+records, according to Professor Osborn, reach backward for something
+like 2,000,000 years. And if, as we have been told, "it is a good thing
+to have ancestors, but sometimes a little hard on the ancestor," in
+this instance at least the founders of the family have every reason to
+regard their descendants with undisguised pride. For the horse family
+started in life in a small way, and the first of the line, the
+Hyracotherium, was "a little animal no bigger than a fox, and on
+five[14] toes he scampered over Tertiary rocks," in the age called
+Eocene, because it was the morning of life for the great group of
+mammals whose culminating point was man. At that time, western North
+America was a country of many lakes, for the most part comparatively
+shallow, around the reedy margins of which moved a host of animals,
+quite unlike those of to-day, and yet foreshadowing them, the
+forerunners of the rhinoceros, tapir, and the horse.
+
+[14] _Four, to be exact; but we prefer to sacrifice the foot of the
+Hyracothere rather than to take liberties with one of the feet of Mrs.
+Stetson's poem._
+
+The early horse--we may call him so by courtesy, although he was then
+very far from being a true horse--was an insignificant little creature,
+apparently far less likely to succeed in life's race than his bulky
+competitors, and yet, by making the most of their opportunities, his
+descendants have survived, while most of theirs have dropped by the
+wayside; and finally, by the aid of man, the horse has become spread
+over the length and breadth of the habitable globe.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 33.--Skeleton of the Modern Horse and of His Eocene
+Ancestor.]
+
+Now right here it may be asked, How do we know that the little
+Hyracothere _was_ the progenitor of the horse, and how can it be shown
+that there is any bond of kinship between him and, for example, the
+great French Percheron? There is only one way in which we can obtain
+this knowledge, and but one method by which the relationship can be
+shown, and that is by collecting the fossil remains of animals long
+extinct and comparing them with the bones of the recent horse, a branch
+of science known as Palaeontology. It has taken a very long time to
+gather the necessary evidence, and it has taken a vast amount of hard
+work in our western Territories, for "the country that is as hot as
+Hades, watered by stagnant alkali pools, is almost invariably the
+richest in fossils." Likewise it has called for the expenditure of much
+time and more patience to put together some of this petrified evidence,
+fragmentary in every sense of the word, and get it into such shape that
+it could be handled by the anatomist. Still, the work has been done,
+and, link by link, the chain has been constructed that unites the horse
+of to-day with the horse of very many yesterdays.
+
+The very first links in this chain are the remains of the bronze age
+and those found among the ruins of the ancient Swiss lake dwellings; but
+earlier still than these are the bones of horses found abundantly in
+northern Europe, Asia, and America. The individual bones and teeth of
+some of these horses are scarcely distinguishable from those of to-day,
+a fact noted in the name, _Equus fraternus_, applied to one species; and
+when teeth alone are found, it is at times practically impossible to say
+whether they belong to a fossil horse or to a modern animal. But when
+enough scattered bones are gathered to make a fairly complete skeleton,
+it becomes evident that the fossil horse had a proportionately larger
+head and smaller feet than his existing relative, and that he was a
+little more like an ass or zebra, for the latter, spite of his gay coat,
+is a near relative of the lowly ass. Moreover, primitive man made
+sketches of the primitive horse, just as he did of the mammoth, and
+these indicate that the horse of those days was something like an
+overgrown Shetland pony, low and heavily built, large-headed and
+rough-coated. For the old cave-dwellers of Europe were intimately
+acquainted with the prehistoric horses, using them for food, as they
+did almost every animal that fell beneath their flint arrows and stone
+axes. And if one may judge from the abundance of bones, the horses must
+have roamed about in bands, just as the horses escaped from civilization
+roam, or have roamed, over the pampas of South America and the prairies
+of the West.
+
+The horse was just as abundant in North America in Pleistocene time as
+in Europe; but there is no evidence to show that it was contemporary
+with early man in North America, and, even were this the case, it is
+generally believed that long before the discovery of America the horse
+had disappeared. And yet, so plentiful and so fresh are his remains, and
+so much like those of the mustang, that the late Professor Cope was wont
+to say that it almost seemed as if the horse _might_ have lingered in
+Texas until the coming of the white man. And Sir William Flower wrote:
+"There is a possibility of the animal having still existed, in a wild
+state, in some parts of the continent remote from that which was first
+visited by the Spaniards, where they were certainly unknown. It has
+been suggested that the horses which were found by Cabot in La Plata in
+1530 cannot have been introduced."
+
+Still we have not the least little bit of positive proof that such was
+the case, and although the site of many an ancient Indian village has
+been carefully explored, no bones of the horse have come to light, or if
+they have been found, bones of the ox or sheep were also present to tell
+that the village was occupied long after the advent of the whites. It is
+also a curious fact that within historic times there have been no wild
+horses, in the true sense of the word, unless indeed those found on the
+steppes north of the Sea of Azof be wild, and this is very doubtful. But
+long before the dawn of history the horse was domesticated in Europe,
+and Caesar found the Germans, and even the old Britons, using war
+chariots drawn by horses--for the first use man seems to have made of
+the horse was to aid him in killing off his fellow-man, and not until
+comparatively modern times was the animal employed in the peaceful arts
+of agriculture. The immediate predecessors of these horses were
+considerably smaller, being about the size and build of a pony, but
+they were very much like a horse in structure, save that the teeth were
+shorter. As they lived during Pliocene times, they have been named
+"Pliohippus."
+
+Going back into the past a step farther, though a pretty long step if we
+reckon by years, we come upon a number of animals very much like horses,
+save for certain cranial peculiarities and the fact that they had three
+toes on each foot, while the horse, as every one knows, has but one toe.
+Now, if we glance at the skeleton of a horse, we will see on either side
+of the canon-bone, in the same situation as the upper part of the little
+toes of the Hippotherium, as these three-toed horses are called, a long
+slender bone, termed by veterinarians the splint bone; and it requires
+no anatomical training to see that the bones in the two animals are the
+same. The horse lacks the lower part of his side toes, that is all, just
+as man will very probably some day lack the last bones of his little
+toe. We find an approach to this condition in some of the Hippotheres
+even, known as Protohippus, in which the side toes are quite small,
+foreshadowing the time when they shall have disappeared entirely. It may
+also be noted here that the splint bones of the horses of the bronze age
+are a little longer than those of existing horses, and that they are
+never united with the large central toe, while nowadays there is
+something of a tendency for the three bones to fuse into one, although
+part of this tendency the writer believes to be due to inflammation set
+up by the strain of the pulling and hauling the animal is now called
+upon to do. Some of these three-toed Hippotheres are not in the direct
+line of ancestry of the horse, but are side branches on the family tree,
+having become so highly specialized in certain directions that no
+further progress horseward was possible.
+
+Backward still, and the bones we find in the Miocene strata of the West,
+belonging to those ancestors of the horse to which the name of
+Mesohippus has been given because they are midway in time and structure
+between the horse of the past and present, tell us that then all horses
+were small and that all had three toes on a foot, while the fore feet
+bore even the suggestion of a fourth toe. From this to our Eocene
+Hyracothere with four toes is only another long-time step. We may go
+even beyond this in time and structure, and carry back the line of the
+horse to animals which only remotely resembled him and had five good
+toes to a foot; but while these contained the possibility of a horse,
+they made no show of it.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 34.--The Development of the Horse.]
+
+Increase in size and decrease in number of the toes were not the only
+changes that were required to transform the progeny of the Hyracothere
+into a horse. These are the most evident; but the increased complexity
+in the structure of the teeth was quite as important. The teeth of
+gnawing animals have often been compared to a chisel which is made of a
+steel plate with soft iron backing, and the teeth of a horse, or of
+other grass-eating animals, are simply an elaboration of this idea. The
+hard enamel, which represents the steel, is set in soft dentine, which
+represents the iron, and in use the dentine wears away the faster of the
+two, so that the enamel stands up in ridges, each tooth becoming, as it
+is correctly termed, "a grinder." In a horse the plates of enamel form
+curved, complex, irregular patterns; but as we go back in time, the
+patterns become less and less elaborate, until in the Hyracothere,
+standing at the foot of the family tree, the teeth are very simple in
+structure. Moreover, his teeth were of limited growth, while those of
+the horse grow for a considerable time, thus compensating for the wear
+to which they are subjected.
+
+We have, then, this direct evidence as to the genealogy of the horse,
+that between the little Eocene Hyracothere and the modern horse we can
+place a series of animals by which we can pass by gradual stages from
+one to the other, and that as we come upward there is an increase in
+stature, in the complexity of the teeth, and in the size of the brain.
+At the same time, the number of toes decreases, which tells that the
+animals were developing more and more speed; for it is a rule that the
+fewer the toes the faster the animal: the fastest of birds, the ostrich,
+has but two toes, and one of these is mostly ornamental; and the fastest
+of mammals, the horse, has but one.
+
+All breeders of fancy stock, particularly of pigeons and poultry,
+recognize the tendency of animals to revert to the forms whence they
+were derived and reproduce some character of a distant ancestor; to
+"throw back," as the breeders term it. If now, instead of reproducing a
+trait or feature possessed by some ancestor a score, a hundred, or
+perhaps a thousand years ago, there should reappear a characteristic of
+some ancestor that flourished 100,000 years back, we should have a
+seeming abnormality, but really a case of reversion; and the more we
+become acquainted with the structure of extinct animals and the
+development of those now living, the better able are we to explain these
+apparent abnormalities.
+
+Bearing in mind that the two splint bones of the horse correspond to the
+upper portions of the side toes of the Hippotherium and Mesohippus, it
+is easy to see that if for any reason these should develop into toes,
+they would make the foot of a modern horse appear like that of his
+distant ancestor. While such a thing rarely happens, yet now and then
+nature apparently does attempt to reproduce a horse's foot after the
+ancient pattern, for occasionally we meet with a horse having, instead
+of the single toe with which the average horse is satisfied, one or
+possibly two extra toes. Sometimes the toe is extra in every sense of
+the word, being a mere duplication of the central toe; but sometimes it
+is an actual development of one of the splint bones. No less a personage
+than Julius Caesar possessed one of these polydactyl horses, and the
+reporters of the _Daily Roman_ and the _Tiberian Gazette_ doubtless
+wrote it up in good journalistic Latin, for we find the horse described
+as having feet that were almost human, and as being looked upon with
+great awe. While this is the most celebrated of extra-toed horses, other
+and more plebeian individuals have been much more widely known through
+having been exhibited throughout the country under such titles as
+"Clique, the horse with six feet," "the eight-footed Cuban horse," and
+so on; and possibly some of these are familiar to readers of this page.
+
+So the collateral evidence, though scanty, bears out the circumstantial
+proof, derived from fossil bones, that the horse has developed from a
+many-toed ancestor; and the evidence points toward the little
+Hyracothere as being that ancestor. It remains only to show some good
+reason why this development should have taken place, or to indicate the
+forces by which it was brought about. We have heard much about "the
+survival of the fittest," a phrase which simply means that those animals
+best adapted to their surroundings will survive, while those ill adapted
+will perish. But it should be added that it means also that the animals
+must be able to adapt themselves to changes in their environment, or to
+change with it. Living beings cannot stand still indefinitely; they must
+progress or perish. And this seems to have been the cause for the
+extinction of the huge quadrupeds that flourished at the time of the
+three-toed Miocene horse. They were adapted to their environment as it
+was; but when the western mountains were thrust upward, cutting off the
+moist winds from the Pacific, making great changes in the rainfall and
+climate to the eastward of the Rocky Mountains, these big beasts, slow
+of foot and dull of brain, could not keep pace with the change, and
+their race vanished from the face of the earth. The day of the little
+Hyracothere was at the beginning of the great series of changes by which
+the lake country of the West, with its marshy flats and rank vegetation,
+became transformed into dry uplands sparsely clad with fine grasses. On
+these dry plains the more nimble-footed animals would have the advantage
+in the struggle for existence; and while the four-toed foot would keep
+its owner from sinking in soft ground, he was handicapped when it became
+a question of speed, for not only is a fleet animal better able to flee
+from danger than his slower fellows, but in time of drouth he can cover
+the greater extent of territory in search of food or water. So, too, as
+the rank rushes gave place to fine grasses, often browned and withered
+beneath the summer's sun, the complex tooth had an advantage over that
+of simpler structure, while the cutting-teeth, so completely developed
+in the horse family, enabled their possessors to crop the grass as
+closely as one could do it with scissors. Likewise, up to a certain
+point, the largest, most powerful animal will not only conquer, or
+escape from, his enemies, but prevail over rivals of his own kind as
+well, and thus it came to pass that those early members of the horse
+family who were preeminent in speed and stature, and harmonized best
+with their surroundings, outstripped their fellows and transmitted these
+qualities to their progeny, until, as a result of long ages of natural
+selection, there was developed the modern horse. The rest man has done:
+the heavy, slow-paced dray horse, the fleet trotter, the huge Percheron,
+and the diminutive pony are one and all the recent products of
+artificial selection.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The best collection of fossil horses, and one specially arranged to
+illustrate the line of descent of the modern horse, is to be found in
+the American Museum of Natural History, New York, but some good
+specimens, of particular interest because they were described by
+Professor Marsh and studied by Huxley are in the Yale University Museum.
+They are referred to in Huxley's "American Addresses; Lectures on
+Evolution." "The Horse," by Sir W. H. Flower, discusses the horse in a
+popular manner from various points of view and contains numerous
+references to books and articles on the subject from which anyone
+wishing for further information could obtain it._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 35.--The Mammoth. _From a drawing by Charles R.
+Knight._]
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE MAMMOTH
+
+    "_His legs were as thick as the bole of the beech,
+      His tusks as the buttonwood white,
+    While his lithe trunk wound like a sapling around
+      An oak in the whirlwind's might._"
+
+     _In the October number of McClure's Magazine for 1899 was
+     published a short story, "The Killing of the Mammoth," by "H.
+     Tukeman," which, to the amazement of the editors, was taken by
+     many readers not as fiction, but as a contribution to natural
+     history. Immediately after the appearance of that number of the
+     magazine, the authorities of the Smithsonian Institution, in
+     which the author had located the remains of the beast of his
+     fancy, were beset with visitors to see the stuffed mammoth, and
+     the daily mail of the Magazine, as well as that of the
+     Smithsonian Institution, was filled with inquiries for more
+     information and for requests to settle wagers as to whether it
+     was a true story or not. The contribution in question was
+     printed purely as fiction, with no idea of misleading the
+     public, and was entitled a story in the table of contents. We
+     doubt if any writer of realistic fiction ever had a more
+     general and convincing proof of success._
+
+
+About three centuries ago, in 1696, a Russian, one Ludloff by name,
+described some bones belonging to what the Tartars called "Mamantu";
+later on, Blumenbach pressed the common name into scientific use as
+"Mammut," and Cuvier gallicized this into "Mammouth," whence by an easy
+transition we get our familiar mammoth. We are so accustomed to use the
+word to describe anything of remarkable size that it would be only
+natural to suppose that the name Mammoth was given to the extinct
+elephant because of its extraordinary bulk. Exactly the reverse of this
+is true, however, for the word came to have its present meaning because
+the original possessor of the name was a huge animal. The Siberian
+peasants called the creature "Mamantu," or "ground-dweller," because
+they believed it to be a gigantic mole, passing its life beneath the
+ground and perishing when by any accident it saw the light. The
+reasoning that led to this belief was very simple and the logic very
+good; no one had ever seen a live Mamantu, but there were plenty of its
+bones lying at or near the surface; consequently if the animal did not
+live above the ground, it must dwell below.
+
+To-day, nearly every one knows that the mammoth was a sort of big,
+hairy elephant, now extinct, and nearly every one has a general idea
+that it lived in the North. There is some uncertainty as to whether the
+mammoth was a mastodon, or the mastodon a mammoth, and there is a great
+deal of misconception as to the size and abundance of this big beast. It
+may be said in passing that the mastodon is only a second or third
+cousin of the mammoth, but that the existing elephant of Asia is a very
+near relative, certainly as near as a first cousin, possibly a very
+great grandson. Popularly, the mammoth is supposed to have been a
+colossus somewhere from twelve to twenty feet in height, beside whom
+modern elephants would seem insignificant; but as "trout lose much in
+dressing," so mammoths shrink in measuring, and while there were
+doubtless Jumbos among them in the way of individuals of exceptional
+magnitude, the majority were decidedly under Jumbo's size. The only
+mounted mammoth skeleton in this country, that in the Chicago Academy of
+Sciences, is one of the largest, the thigh-bone measuring five feet one
+inch in length, or a foot more than that of Jumbo; and as Jumbo stood
+eleven feet high, the rule of three applied to this thigh-bone would
+give the living animal a height of thirteen feet eight inches. The
+height of this specimen is given as thirteen feet in its bones, with an
+estimate of fourteen feet in its clothes; but as the skeleton is
+obviously mounted altogether too high, it is pretty safe to say that
+thirteen feet is a good, fair allowance for the height of this animal
+when alive. As for the majority of mammoths, they would not average more
+than nine or ten feet high. Sir Samuel Baker tells us that he has seen
+plenty of wild African elephants that would exceed Jumbo by a foot or
+more, and while this must be accepted with caution, since unfortunately
+he neglected to put a tape-line on them, yet Mr. Thomas Baines did
+measure a specimen twelve feet high. This, coupled with Sir Samuel's
+statement, indicates that there is not so much difference between the
+mammoth and the elephant as there might be. This applies to the mammoth
+_par excellence_, the species known scientifically as _Elephas
+primigenius_, whose remains are found in many parts of the Northern
+Hemisphere and occur abundantly in Siberia and Alaska. There were other
+elephants than the mammoth, and some that exceeded him in size, notably
+_Elephas meridionalis_ of southern Europe, and _Elephas columbi_ of our
+Southern and Western States, but even the largest cannot positively be
+asserted to have exceeded a height of thirteen feet. Tusks offer
+convenient terms of comparison, and those of an average fully grown
+mammoth are from eight to ten feet in length; those of the famous St.
+Petersburg specimen and those of the huge specimen in Chicago measuring
+respectively nine feet three inches, and nine feet eight inches. So far
+as the writer is aware, the largest tusks actually measured are two from
+Alaska, one twelve feet ten inches long, weighing 190 pounds, reported
+by Mr. Jay Beach; and another eleven feet long, weighing 200 pounds,
+noted by Mr. T. L. Brevig. Compared with these we have the big tusk that
+used to stand on Fulton Street, New York, just an inch under nine feet
+long, and weighing 184 pounds, or the largest shown at Chicago in 1893,
+which was seven feet six inches long, and weighed 176 pounds. The
+largest, most beautiful tusks, probably, ever seen in this country were
+a pair brought from Zanzibar and displayed by Messrs. Tiffany & Company
+in 1900. The measurements and weights of these were as follows: length
+along outer curve, ten feet and three-fourths of an inch, circumference
+one foot, eleven inches, weight, 224 pounds; length along outer curve,
+ten feet, three and one-half inches, circumference two feet and
+one-fourth of an inch, weight, 239 pounds.
+
+For our knowledge of the external appearance of the mammoth we are
+indebted to the more or less entire examples which have been found at
+various times in Siberia, but mainly to the noted specimen found in 1799
+near the Lena, embedded in the ice, where it had been reposing, so
+geologists tell us, anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 years. How the
+creature gradually thawed out of its icy tomb, and the tusks were taken
+by the discoverer and sold for ivory; how the dogs fed upon the flesh in
+summer, while bears and wolves feasted upon it in winter; how the animal
+was within an ace of being utterly lost to science when, at the last
+moment, the mutilated remains were rescued by Mr. Adams, is an old
+story, often told and retold. Suffice it to say that, besides the bones,
+enough of the beast was preserved to tell us exactly what was the
+covering of this ancient elephant, and to show that it was a creature
+adapted to withstand the northern cold and fitted for living on the
+branches of the birch and hemlock.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Skeleton of the Mammoth in the Royal Museum of
+St. Petersburg.]
+
+The exact birthplace of the mammoth is as uncertain as that of many
+other great characters; but his earliest known resting-place is in the
+Cromer Forest Beds of England, a country inhabited by him at a time when
+the German Ocean was dry land and Great Britain part of a peninsula.
+Here his remains are found to-day, while from the depths of the North
+Sea the hardy trawlers have dredged hundreds, aye thousands, of mammoth
+teeth in company with soles and turbot. If, then, the mammoth originated
+in western Europe, and not in that great graveyard of fossil elephants,
+northern India, eastward he went spreading over all Europe north of the
+Pyrenees and Alps, save only Scandinavia, whose glaciers offered no
+attractions, scattering his bones abundantly by the wayside to serve as
+marvels for future ages. Strange indeed have been some of the tales to
+which these and other elephantine remains have given rise when they came
+to light in the good old days when knowledge of anatomy was small and
+credulity was great. The least absurd theory concerning them was that
+they were the bones of the elephants which Hannibal brought from Africa.
+Occasionally they were brought forward as irrefutable evidences of the
+deluge; but usually they figured as the bones of giants, the most famous
+of them being known as Teutobochus, King of the Cimbri, a lusty warrior
+said to have had a height of nineteen feet. Somewhat smaller, but still
+of respectable height, fourteen feet, was "Littell Johne" of Scotland,
+whereof Hector Boece wrote, concluding, in a moralizing tone, "Be quilk
+(which) it appears how extravegant and squaire pepill grew in oure
+regioun afore they were effeminat with lust and intemperance of mouth."
+More than this, these bones have been venerated in Greece and Rome as
+the remains of pagan heroes, and later on worshipped as relics of
+Christian saints. Did not the church of Valencia possess an elephant
+tooth which did duty as that of St. Christopher, and, so late as 1789,
+was not a thigh-bone, figuring as the arm-bone of a saint, carried in
+procession through the streets in order to bring rain?
+
+Out of Europe eastward into Asia the mammoth took his way, and having
+peopled that vast region, took advantage of a land connection then
+existing between Asia and North America and walked over into Alaska, in
+company with the forerunners of the bison and the ancestors of the
+mountain sheep and Alaskan brown bear. Still eastward and southward he
+went, until he came to the Atlantic coast, the latitude of southern New
+York roughly marking the southern boundary of the broad domain over
+which the mammoth roamed undisturbed.[15] Not that of necessity all this
+vast area was occupied at one time; but this was the range of the
+mammoth during Pleistocene time, for over all this region his bones and
+teeth are found in greater or less abundance and in varying conditions
+of preservation. In regions like parts of Siberia and Alaska, where the
+bones are entombed in a wet and cold, often icy, soil, the bones and
+tusks are almost as perfectly preserved as though they had been
+deposited but a score of years ago, while remains so situated that they
+have been subjected to varying conditions of dryness and moisture are
+always in a fragmentary state. As previously noted, several more or less
+entire carcasses of the mammoth have been discovered in Siberia, only to
+be lost; and, while no entire animal has so far been found in Alaska,
+some day one may yet come to light. That there is some possibility of
+this is shown by the discovery, recorded by Mr. Dall, of the partial
+skeleton of a mammoth in the bank of the Yukon with some of the fat
+still present, and although this had been partially converted into
+adipocere, it was fresh enough to be used by the natives for greasing,
+not their boots, but their boats. And up to the present time this is the
+nearest approach to finding a live mammoth in Alaska.
+
+[15] _This must be taken as a very general statement, as the distinction
+between and habitats of Elephas primigenius and Elephas columbi, the
+southern mammoth, are not satisfactorily determined; moreover, the two
+species overlap through a wide area of the West and Northwest._
+
+As to why the mammoth became extinct, we _know_ absolutely nothing,
+although various theories, some much more ingenious than plausible,
+have been advanced to account for their extermination--they perished of
+starvation; they were overtaken by floods on their supposed migrations
+and drowned in detachments; they fell through the ice, equally in
+detachments, and were swept out to sea. But all we can safely say is
+that long ages ago the last one perished off the face of the earth.
+Strange it is, too, that these mighty beasts, whose bulk was ample to
+protect them against four-footed foes, and whose woolly coat was proof
+against the cold, should have utterly vanished. They ranged from England
+eastward to New York, almost around the world; from the Alps to the
+Arctic Ocean; and in such numbers that to-day their tusks are articles
+of commerce, and fossil ivory has its price current as well as wheat.
+Mr. Boyd Dawkins thinks that the mammoth was actually exterminated by
+early man, but, even granting that this might be true for southern and
+western Europe, it could not be true of the herds that inhabited the
+wastes of Siberia, or of the thousands that flourished in Alaska and the
+western United States. So far as man is concerned, the mammoth might
+still be living in these localities, where, before the discovery of gold
+drew thousands of miners to Alaska, there were vast stretches of
+wilderness wholly untrodden by the foot of man. Neither could this
+theory account for the disappearance of the mastodon from North America,
+where that animal covered so vast a stretch of territory that man,
+unaided by nature, could have made little impression on its numbers.
+That many were swept out to sea by the flooded rivers of Siberia is
+certain, for some of the low islands off the coast are said to be formed
+of sand, ice, and bones of the mammoth, and thence, for hundreds of
+years, have come the tusks which are sold in the market beside those of
+the African and Indian elephants.
+
+That man was contemporary with the mammoth in southern Europe is fairly
+certain, for not only are the remains of the mammoth and man's flint
+weapons found together, but in a few instances some primeval Landseer
+graved on slate, ivory, or reindeer antler a sketchy outline of the
+beast, somewhat impressionistic perhaps, but still, like the work of a
+true artist, preserving the salient features. We see the curved tusks,
+the snaky trunk, and the shaggy coat that we know belonged to the
+mammoth, and we may feel assured that if early man did not conquer the
+clumsy creature with fire and flint, he yet gazed upon him from the safe
+vantage point of some lofty tree or inaccessible rock, and then went
+home to tell his wife and neighbors how the animal escaped because his
+bow missed fire. That man and mammoth lived together in North America is
+uncertain; so far there is no evidence to show that they did, although
+the absence of such evidence is no proof that they did not. That any
+live mammoth has for centuries been seen on the Alaskan tundras is
+utterly improbable, and on Mr. C. H. Townsend seems to rest the
+responsibility of having, though quite unintentionally, introduced the
+Alaskan Live Mammoth into the columns of the daily press. It befell in
+this wise: Among the varied duties of our revenue marine is that of
+patrolling and exploring the shores of arctic Alaska and the waters of
+the adjoining sea, and it is not so many years ago that the cutter
+_Corwin_, if memory serves aright, held the record of farthest north on
+the Pacific side. On one of these northern trips, to the Kotzebue Sound
+region, famous for the abundance of its deposits of mammoth bones,[16]
+the _Corwin_ carried Mr. Townsend, then naturalist to the United States
+Fish Commission. At Cape Prince of Wales some natives came on board
+bringing a few bones and tusks of the mammoth, and upon being questioned
+as to whether or not any of the animals to which they pertained were
+living, promptly replied that all were dead, inquiring in turn if the
+white men had ever seen any, and if they knew how these animals, so
+vastly larger than a reindeer, looked.
+
+[16] _Elephant Point, at the mouth of the Buckland River, is so named
+from the numbers of mammoth bones which have accumulated there._
+
+Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was on board a text-book of geology
+containing the well-known cut of the St. Petersburg mammoth, and this
+was brought forth, greatly to the edification of the natives, who were
+delighted at recognizing the curved tusks and the bones they knew so
+well. Next the natives wished to know what the outside of the creature
+looked like, and as Mr. Townsend had been at Ward's establishment in
+Rochester when the first copy of the Stuttgart restoration was made, he
+rose to the emergency, and made a sketch. This was taken ashore,
+together with a copy of the cut of the skeleton that was laboriously
+made by an Innuit sprawled out at full length on the deck. Now the
+Innuits, as Mr. Townsend tells us, are great gadabouts, making long
+sledge journeys in winter and equally long trips by boat in summer,
+while each season they hold a regular fair on Kotzebue Sound, where a
+thousand or two natives gather to barter and gossip. On these journeys
+and at these gatherings the sketches were no doubt passed about, copied,
+and recopied, until a large number of Innuits had become well acquainted
+with the appearance of the mammoth, a knowledge that naturally they were
+well pleased to display to any white visitors. Also, like the Celt, the
+Alaskan native delights to give a "soft answer," and is always ready to
+furnish the kind of information desired. Thus in due time the newspaper
+man learned that the Alaskans could make pictures of the mammoth, and
+that they had some knowledge of its size and habits; so with inference
+and logic quite as good as that of the Tungusian peasant, the reporter
+came to the conclusion that somewhere in the frozen wilderness the last
+survivor of the mammoths must still be at large. And so, starting on the
+Pacific coast, the Live Mammoth story wandered from paper to paper,
+until it had spread throughout the length and breadth of the United
+States, when it was captured by Mr. Tukeman, who with much artistic
+color and some realistic touches, transferred it to _McClure's
+Magazine_, and--unfortunately for the officials thereof--to the
+Smithsonian Institution.
+
+And now, once for all, it may be said that _there is no mounted mammoth_
+to awe the visitor to the national collections or to any other; and yet
+there seems no good and conclusive reason why there should not be. True,
+there are no live mammoths to be had at any price; neither are their
+carcasses to be had on demand; still there is good reason to believe
+that a much smaller sum than that said to have been paid by Mr. Conradi
+for the mammoth which is _not_ in the Smithsonian Institution, would
+place one there.[17] It probably could not be done in one year; it might
+not be possible in five years; but should any man of means wish to
+secure enduring fame by showing the world the mammoth as it stood in
+life, a hundred centuries ago, before the dawn of even tradition, he
+could probably accomplish the result by the expenditure of a far less
+sum than it would cost to participate in an international yacht race.
+
+[17] _Since these lines were written another fine example of the Mammoth
+has been discovered in Siberia and even now (Oct., 1901) an expedition
+is on its way to secure the skin and skeleton for the Academy of Natural
+Sciences at St. Petersburg._
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_The mounted skeleton of the mammoth in the museum of the Chicago
+Academy of Science is still the only one on exhibition in the United
+States; this specimen is probably the Southern Mammoth, Elephas columbi,
+a species, or race, characterized by its great size and the coarse
+structure of the teeth. Remains of the mammoth are common enough but,
+save in Alaska, they are usually in a poor state of preservation or
+consist of isolated bones or teeth. A great many skeletons of mammoth
+have been found by gold miners in Alaska, and with proper care some of
+these could undoubtedly have been secured. Naturally, however, the
+miners do not feel like taking the time and trouble to exhume bones
+whose value is uncertain, while the cost of transportation precludes the
+bringing out of many specimens._
+
+_Some reports of mammoths have been based on the bones of whales,
+including a skull that was figured in the daily papers._
+
+_Almost every museum has on exhibition teeth of the mammoth, and there
+is a skull, though from a small individual, of the Southern Mammoth in
+the American Museum of Natural History, New York._
+
+_The tusk obtained by Mr. Beach and mentioned in the text still holds
+the record for mammoth tusks. The greatest development of tusks
+occurred in Elephas ganesa, a species found in Pliocene deposits of the
+Siwalik Hills, India. This species appears not to have exceeded the
+existing elephant in bulk, but the tusks are twelve feet nine inches
+long, and two feet two inches in circumference. How the animal ever
+carried them is a mystery, both on account of their size and their
+enormous leverage. As for teeth, an upper grinder of Elephas columbi in
+the United States National Museum is ten and one-half inches high, nine
+inches wide, the grinding face being eight by five inches. This tooth,
+which is unusually perfect, retaining the outer covering of cement, came
+from Afton, Indian Territory, and weighs a little over fifteen pounds.
+The lower tooth, shown in Fig. 38, is twelve inches long, and the
+grinding face is nine by three and one-half inches; this is also from
+Elephas columbi. Grinders of the Northern Mammoth are smaller, and the
+plates of enamel thinner, and closer to one another. Mr. F. E. Andrews,
+of Gunsight, Texas, reports having found a femur, or thigh-bone five
+feet four inches long, and a humerus measuring four feet three inches,
+these being the largest bones on record indicating an animal fourteen
+feet high._
+
+_There is a vast amount of literature relating to the mammoth, some of
+it very untrustworthy. A list of all discoveries of specimens in the
+flesh is given by Nordenskiold in "The Voyage of the Vega" and "The
+Mammoth and the Flood" by Sir Henry Howorth, is a mine of information.
+Mr. Townsend's "Alaska Live-Mammoth Story" may be found in "Forest and
+Stream" for August 14, 1897._
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 37.--The Mammoth as Engraved by a Primitive Artist
+on a Piece of Mammoth Tusk.]
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE MASTODON
+
+                   "_... who shall place
+     A limit to the giant's unchained strength?_"
+
+
+The name mastodon is given to a number of species of fossil elephants
+differing from the true elephants, of which the mammoth is an example,
+in the structure of the teeth. In the mastodons the crown, or grinding
+face of the tooth, is formed by more or less regular /\-shaped cross
+ridges, covered with enamel, while in the elephants the enamel takes the
+form of narrow, pocket-shaped plates, set upright in the body of the
+tooth. Moreover, in the mastodons the roots of the teeth are long
+prongs, while in the elephants the roots are small and irregular. A
+glance at the cuts will show these distinctions better than they can be
+explained by words. Back in the past, however, we meet, as we should if
+there is any truth in the theory of evolution, with elephants having an
+intermediate pattern of teeth.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Tooth of Mastodon and of Mammoth.]
+
+There is usually, or at least often, another point of difference between
+elephants and mastodons, for many of the latter not only had tusks in
+the upper, but in the lower jaw, and these are never found in any of the
+true elephants. The lower tusks are longer and larger in the earlier
+species of mastodon than in those of more recent age and in the latest
+species, the common American mastodon, the little lower tusks were
+usually shed early in life. These afford some hints of the relationships
+of the mastodon; for in Europe are found remains of a huge beast well
+called Dinotherium, or terrible animal, which possessed lower tusks
+only, and these, instead of sticking out from the jaw are bent directly
+downwards. No perfect skull of this creature has yet been found, but it
+is believed to have had a short trunk. For a long time nothing but the
+skull was known, and some naturalists thought the animal to have been a
+gigantic manatee, or sea cow, and that the tusks were used for tearing
+food from the bottom of rivers and for anchoring the animal to the bank,
+just as the walrus uses his tusks for digging clams and climbing out
+upon the ice. In the first restorations of Dinotherium it is represented
+lying amidst reeds, the feet concealed from view, the head alone
+visible, but now it is pictured as standing erect, for the discovery of
+massive leg-bones has definitely settled the question as to whether it
+did or did not have limbs.
+
+There is another hint of relationship in the upper tusks of the earlier
+mastodons, and this is the presence of a band of enamel running down
+each tusk. In all gnawing animals the front, cutting teeth are formed of
+soft dentine, or ivory, faced with a plate of enamel, just as the blade
+of a chisel or plane is formed of a plate of tempered steel backed with
+soft iron; the object of this being the same in both tooth and chisel,
+to keep the edge sharp by wearing away the softer material. In the case
+of the chisel this is done by a man with a grindstone, but with the
+tooth it is performed automatically and more pleasantly by the gnawing
+of food. In the mastodon and elephant the tusks, which are the
+representatives of the cutting teeth of rodents, are wide apart, and of
+course do not gnaw anything, but the presence of these enamel bands
+hints at a time when they and their owner were smaller and differently
+shaped, and the teeth were used for cutting. Thus, great though the
+disparity of size may be, there is a suggestion that through the
+mastodon the elephant is distantly related to the mouse, and that, could
+we trace their respective pedigrees far enough, we might find a common
+ancestor.
+
+This presence of structures that are apparently of no use, often worse
+than useless, is regarded as the survival of characters that once served
+some good purpose, like the familiar buttons on the sleeve or at the
+back of a man's coat, or the bows and ruffles on a woman's dress. We
+are told that these are put on "to make the dress look pretty," but the
+student regards the bows as vestiges of the time when there were no
+buttons and hooks and eyes had not been invented, and dresses were tied
+together with strings or ribbons. As for ruffles, they took the place of
+flounces, and flounces are vestiges of the time when a young woman wore
+the greater part of her wardrobe on her back, putting on one dress above
+another, the bottoms of the skirts showing like so many flounces. So
+buttons, ruffles, and the vermiform appendix of which we hear so much
+all fall in the category of vestigial structures.
+
+Where the mastodons originated, we know not: Senor Ameghino thinks their
+ancestors are to be found in Patagonia, and he is very probably wrong;
+Professor Cope thought they came from Asia, and he is probably right; or
+they may have immigrated from the convenient Antarctica, which is called
+up to account for various facts in the distribution of animals.[18]
+
+[18] _During the past year, 1901, Mr. C. W. Andrews of the British
+Museum has discovered in Egypt a small and primitive species of
+mastodon, also the remains of another animal which he thinks may be the
+long sought ancestor of the elephant family, which includes the mammoth
+and mastodon._
+
+Neither do we at present know just how many species of mastodons there
+may have been in the Western Hemisphere, for most of them are known from
+scattered teeth, single jaws, and odd bones, so that we cannot tell just
+what differences may be due to sex or individual variation. It is
+certain, however, that several distinct kinds, or species, have
+inhabited various parts of North America, while remains of others occur
+in South America. _The_ mastodon, however, the one most recent in point
+of time, and the best known because its remains are scattered far and
+wide over pretty much the length and breadth of the United States, and
+are found also in southern and western Canada, is the well-named
+_Mastodon americanus_,[19] and unless otherwise specified this alone
+will be meant when the name mastodon is used. In some localities the
+mastodon seems to have abounded, but between the Hudson and Connecticut
+Rivers indications of its former presence are rare, and east of that
+they are practically wanting. The best preserved specimens come from
+Ulster and Orange Counties, New York, for these seem to have furnished
+the animal with the best facilities for getting mired. Just west of the
+Catskills, parallel with the valley of the Hudson, is a series of
+meadows, bogs, and pools marking the sites of swamps that came into
+existence after the recession of the mighty ice-sheet that long covered
+eastern North America, and in these many a mastodon, seeking for food or
+water, or merely wallowing in the mud, stuck fast and perished
+miserably. And here to-day the spade of the farmer as he sinks a ditch
+to drain what is left of some beaver pond of bygone days, strikes some
+bone as brown and rugged as a root, so like a piece of water-soaked wood
+that nine times out of ten it is taken for a fragment of tree-trunk.
+
+[19] _This has also been called giganteus and ohioticus, but the name
+americanus claims priority, and should therefore be used._
+
+The first notice of the mastodon in North America goes back to 1712, and
+is found in a letter from Cotton Mather to Dr. Woodward (of England?)
+written at Boston on November 17th, in which he speaks of a large work
+in manuscript entitled _Biblia Americana_, and gives as a sample a note
+on the passage in Genesis (VI. 4) in which we read that "there were
+giants in the earth in those days." We are told that this is confirmed
+by "the bones and teeth of some large animal found lately in Albany, in
+New England, which for some reason he thinks to be human; particularly a
+tooth brought from the place where it was found to New York in 1705,
+being a very large grinder, weighing four pounds and three quarters;
+with a bone supposed to be a thigh-bone, seventeen feet long," the total
+length of the body being taken as seventy-five feet. Thus bones of the
+mastodon, as well as those of the mammoth, have done duty as those of
+giants.
+
+And as the first mastodon remains recorded from North America came from
+the region west of the Hudson, so the first fairly complete skeleton
+also came from that locality, secured at a very considerable outlay of
+money and a still more considerable expenditure of labor by the
+exertions of C. W. Peale. This specimen was described at some length by
+Rembrandt Peale in a privately printed pamphlet, now unfortunately
+rare, and described in some respects better than has been done by any
+subsequent writer, since the points of difference between various parts
+of the mastodon and elephant were clearly pointed out. This skeleton was
+exhibited in London, and afterwards at Peale's Museum in Philadelphia
+where, with much other valuable material, it was destroyed by fire.
+
+Struck by the evident crushing power of the great ridged molars, Peale
+was led to believe that the mastodon was a creature of carnivorous
+habits, and so described it, but this error is excusable, the more that
+to this day, when the mastodon is well known, and its description
+published time and again in the daily papers, finders of the teeth often
+consider them as belonging to some huge beast of prey.
+
+Since the time of Peale several fine specimens have been taken from
+Ulster and Orange Counties, among them the well-known "Warren Mastodon,"
+and there is not the slightest doubt that many more will be recovered
+from the meadows, swamps, and pond holes of these two counties.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 39.--The Missourium of Koch, from a Tracing of the
+Figure Illustrating Koch's Description.]
+
+The next mastodon to appear on the scene was the so-called Missourium of
+Albert Koch, which he constructed somewhat as he did the Hydrarchus (see
+p. 61) of several individuals pieced together, thus forming a skeleton
+that was a monster in more ways than one. To heighten the effect, the
+curved tusks were so placed that they stood out at right angles to the
+sides of the head, like the swords upon the axles of ancient war
+chariots. Like Peale's specimen this was exhibited in London, and there
+it still remains, for, stripped of its superfluous bones, and remounted,
+it may now be seen in the British Museum.
+
+Many a mastodon has come to light since the time of Koch, for while it
+is commonly supposed that remains of the animal are great rarities, as a
+matter of fact they are quite common, and it may safely be said that
+during the seasons of ditching, draining, and well-digging not a week
+passes without one or more mastodons being unearthed. Not that these are
+complete skeletons, very far from it, the majority of finds are
+scattered teeth, crumbling tusks, or massive leg-bones, but still the
+mastodon is far commoner in the museums of this country than is the
+African elephant, for at the present date there are eleven of the former
+to one of the latter, the single skeleton of African elephant being that
+of Jumbo in the American Museum of Natural History. If one may judge by
+the abundance of bones, mastodons must have been very numerous in some
+favored localities such as parts of Michigan, Florida, and Missouri and
+about Big Bone Lick, Ky. Perhaps the most noteworthy of all deposits is
+that at Kimmswick, about twenty miles south of St. Louis, where in a
+limited area Mr. L. W. Beehler has exhumed bones representing several
+hundred individuals, varying in size from a mere baby mastodon up to the
+great tusker whose wornout teeth proclaim that he had reached the limit
+of even mastodonic old age. The spot where this remarkable deposit was
+found is at the foot of a bluff near the junction of two little streams,
+and it seems probable that in the days when these were larger the spring
+floods swept down the bodies of animals that had perished during the
+winter to ground in an eddy beneath the bluff. Or as the place abounds
+in springs of sulphur and salt water it may be that this was where the
+animals assembled during cold weather, just as the moas are believed to
+have gathered in the swamps of New Zealand, and here the weaker died and
+left their bones.
+
+The mastodon must have looked very much like any other elephant, though
+a little shorter in the legs and somewhat more heavily built than either
+of the living species, while the head was a trifle flatter and the jaw
+decidedly longer. The tusks are a variable quantity, sometimes merely
+bowing outwards, often curving upwards to form a half circle; they were
+never so long as the largest mammoth tusks, but to make up for this they
+were a shade stouter for their length. As the mastodon ranged well to
+the north it is fair to suppose that he may have been covered with long
+hair, a supposition that seems to be borne out by the discovery, noted
+by Rembrandt Peale, of a mass of long, coarse, woolly hair buried in one
+of the swamps of Ulster County, New York. And with these facts in mind,
+aided by photographs of various skeletons of mastodons, Mr. Gleeson
+made the restoration which accompanies this chapter.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 40.--The Mastodon. _From a drawing by J. M.
+Gleeson._]
+
+As for the size of the mastodon, this, like that of the mammoth, is
+popularly much over-estimated, and it is more than doubtful if any
+attained the height of a full-grown African elephant. The largest femur,
+or thigh-bone, that has come under the writer's notice was one he
+measured as it lay in the earth at Kimmswick, and this was just four
+feet long, three inches shorter than the thigh-bone of Jumbo. Several of
+the largest thigh-bones measured show so striking an unanimity in size,
+between 46 and 47 inches in length, that we may be pretty sure they
+represent the average old "bull" mastodon, and if we say that these
+animals stood ten feet high we are probably doing them full justice. An
+occasional tusk reaches a length of ten feet, but seven or eight is the
+usual size, with a diameter of as many inches, and this is no larger
+than the tusks of the African elephant would grow if they had a chance.
+It is painful to be obliged to scale down the mastodon as we have just
+done the mammoth, but if any reader knows of specimens larger than those
+noted, he should by all means publish their measurements.[20]
+
+[20] _As skeletons are sometimes mounted, they stand a full foot or more
+higher at the shoulders than the animal stood in life, this being caused
+by raising the body until the shoulder-blades are far below the tips of
+the vertebrae, a position they never assume in life._
+
+The disappearance of the mastodon is as difficult to account for as that
+of the mammoth, and, as will be noted, there is absolutely no evidence
+to show that man had any hand in it. Neither can it be ascribed to
+change of climate, for the mastodon, as indicated by the wide
+distribution of its bones, was apparently adapted to a great diversity
+of climates, and was as much at home amid the cool swamps of Michigan
+and New York as on the warm savannas of Florida and Louisiana. Certainly
+the much used, and abused, glacial epoch cannot be held accountable for
+the extermination of the creature, for the mastodon came into New York
+after the recession of the great ice-sheet, and tarried to so late a
+date that bones buried in the swamps retain much of their animal
+matter. So recent, comparatively speaking, has been the disappearance of
+the mastodon, and so fresh-looking are some of its bones, that Thomas
+Jefferson thought in his day that it might still be living in some part
+of the then unexplored Northwest.
+
+It is a moot question whether or not man and the mastodon were
+contemporaries in North America, and while many there be who, like the
+writer of these lines, believe that this was the case, an expression of
+belief is not a demonstration of fact. The best that can be said is that
+there are scattered bits of testimony, slight though they are, which
+seem to point that way, but no one so strong by itself that it could not
+be shaken by sharp cross-questioning and enable man to prove an alibi in
+a trial by jury. For example, in the great bone deposit at Kimmswick,
+Mo., Mr. Beehler found a flint arrowhead, but this may have lain just
+over the bone-bearing layer, or have got in by some accident in
+excavating. How easily a mistake may be made is shown by the report sent
+to the United States National Museum of many arrowheads associated with
+mastodon bones in a spring at Afton, Indian Territory. This spring was
+investigated, and a few mastodon bones and flint arrowheads were found,
+but the latter were in a stratum just above the bones, although this was
+overlooked by the first diggers.[21] Koch reported finding charcoal and
+arrowheads so associated with mastodon bones that he inferred the animal
+to have been destroyed by fire and arrows after it became mired. It has
+been said that Koch could have had no object in disseminating this
+report, and hence that it may be credited, but he had just as much
+interest in doing this as he did in fabricating the Hydrarchus and the
+Missourium, and his testimony is not to be considered seriously. It
+seems to be with the mastodon much as it is with the sea-serpent; the
+latter never appears to a naturalist, remains of the former are never
+found by a trained observer associated with indications of the presence
+of man. Perhaps an exception should be made in the case of Professor J.
+M. Clarke, who found fragments of charcoal in a deposit of muck under
+some bones of mastodon.
+
+[21] _This locality has just been carefully investigated by Mr. W. H.
+Holmes of the United States National Museum who found bones of the
+mastodon and Southern Mammoth associated with arrowheads. But he also
+found fresh bones of bison, horse, and wolf, showing that these and the
+arrowheads had simply sunk to the level of the older deposit._
+
+We may pass by the so-called "Elephant Mound," which to the eye of an
+unimaginative observer looks as if it might have been intended for any
+one of several beasts; also, with bated breath and due respect for the
+bitter controversy waged over them, pass we by the elephant pipes. There
+remains, then, not a bit of man's handiwork, not a piece of pottery,
+engraved stone, or scratched bone that can _unhesitatingly_ be said to
+have been wrought into the shape of an elephant before the coming of the
+white man. True, there is "The Lenape Stone," found near Doyleston, Pa.,
+in 1872, a gorget graven on one side with the representation of men
+attacking an elephant, while the other bears a number of figures of
+various animals. The good faith of the finder of this stone is
+unimpeachable, but it is a curious fact that, while this gorget is
+elaborately decorated on both sides, no similar stone, out of all that
+have been found, bears any image whatsoever. On the other hand, if not
+made by the aborigines, who made it, why was it made, and why did nine
+years elapse between the discovery of the first and second portions of
+the broken ornament? These are questions the reader may decide for
+himself; the author will only say that to his mind the drawing is too
+elaborate, and depicts entirely too much to have been made by a
+primitive artist. A much better bit of testimony seems to be presented
+by a fragment of Fulgur shell found near Hollyoak, Del., and now in the
+United States National Museum, which bears a very rudely scratched image
+of an animal that may have been intended for a mastodon or a bison. This
+piece of shell is undeniably old, but there is, unfortunately, the
+uncertainty just mentioned as to the animal depicted. The familiar
+legend of the Big Buffalo that destroyed animals and men and defied even
+the lightnings of the Great Spirit has been thought by some to have
+originated in a tradition of the mastodon handed down from ancient
+times; but why consider that the mastodon is meant? Why not a legendary
+bison that has increased with years of story-telling? And so the
+co-existence of man and mastodon must rest as a case of not proven,
+although there is a strong probability that the two did live together in
+the dim ages of the past, and some day the evidence may come to light
+that will prove it beyond a peradventure. If scientific men are charged
+with obstinacy and unwarranted incredulity in declining to accept the
+testimony so far presented, it must be remembered that the evidence as
+to the existence of the sea serpent is far stronger, since it rests on
+the testimony of eye-witnesses, and yet the creature himself has never
+been seen by a trained observer, nor has any specimen, not a scale, a
+tooth, or a bone, ever made its way into any museum.
+
+
+_REFERENCES_
+
+_There are at least eleven mounted skeletons of the Mastodon in the
+United States, and the writer trusts he may be pardoned for mentioning
+only those which are most accessible. These are in the American Museum
+of Natural History, New York; the State Museum, Albany, N. Y.; Field
+Columbian Museum, Chicago; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg; Museum of
+Comparative Zooelogy, Cambridge, Mass. There is no mounted skeleton in
+the United States National Museum, nor has there ever been._
+
+_The heaviest pair of tusks is in the possession of T. O. Tuttle,
+Seneca, Mich., and they are nine and one-half inches in diameter, and a
+little over eight feet long; very few tusks, however, reach eight inches
+in diameter. The thigh-bone of an old male mastodon measures from
+forty-five to forty-six and one-half inches long, the humerus from
+thirty-five to forty inches. The height of the mounted skeleton is of
+little value as an indication of size, since it depends so much upon the
+manner in which the skeleton is mounted. The grinders of the mastodon
+have three cross ridges, save the last, which has four, and a final
+elevation, or heel. This does not apply to the teeth of very young
+animals. The presence or absence of the last grinder will show whether
+or not the animal is of full age and size, while the amount of wear
+indicates the comparative age of the specimen._
+
+_The skeleton of the "Warren Mastodon" is described at length by Dr. J.
+C. Warren, in a quarto volume entitled "Mastodon Giganteus." There is
+much information in a little book by J. P. MacLean, "Mastodon, Mammoth,
+and Man," but the reader must not accept all its statements
+unhesitatingly. The first volume, 1887, of the New Scribner's Magazine
+contains an article on "American Elephant Myths," by Professor W. B.
+Scott, but he is under an erroneous impression regarding the size of the
+mastodon, and photographs of the Maya carvings show that their
+resemblance to elephants has been exaggerated in the wood cuts. The
+story of the Lenape Stone is told at length by H. C. Mercer in "The
+Lenape Stone, or the Indian and the Mammoth."_
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 41.--The Lenape Stone, Reduced.]
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+WHY DO ANIMALS BECOME EXTINCT?
+
+    "_And Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
+    Abode his destined Hour and went his way._"
+
+
+It is often asked "why do animals become extinct?" but the question is
+one to which it is impossible to give a comprehensive and satisfactory
+reply; this chapter does not pretend to do so, merely to present a few
+aspects of this complicated, many-sided problem.
+
+In very many cases it may be said that actual extermination has not
+taken place, but that in the course of evolution one species has passed
+into another; species may have been lost, but the race, or phylum
+endures, just as in the growth of a tree, the twigs and branches of the
+sapling disappear, while the tree, as a whole, grows onward and upward.
+This is what we see in the horse, which is the living representative of
+an unbroken line reaching back to the little Eocene Hyracothere. So in
+a general way it may be said that much of what at the first glance we
+might term extinction is really the replacement of one set of animals by
+another better adapted to surrounding conditions.
+
+Again, there are many cases of animals, and particularly of large
+animals, so peculiar in their make up, so very obviously adapted to
+their own special surroundings that it requires little imagination to
+see that it would have been a difficult matter for them to have
+responded to even a slight change in the world about them. Such great
+and necessarily sluggish brutes as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, with
+their tons of flesh, small heads, and feeble teeth, were obviously
+reared in easy circumstances, and unfitted to succeed in any strenuous
+struggle for existence. Stegosaurus, with his bizarre array of plates
+and spines, and huge-headed Triceratops, had evidently carried
+specialization to an extreme, while in turn the carnivorous forms must
+have required an abundant supply of slow and easily captured prey.
+
+Coming down to a more recent epoch, when the big Titanotheres
+flourished, it is easy to see from a glance at their large, simple teeth
+that these beasts needed an ample provision of coarse vegetation, and as
+they seem never to have spread far beyond their birthplace, climatic
+change, modifying even a comparatively limited area, would suffice to
+sweep them out of existence. To use the epitaph proposed by Professor
+Marsh for the tombstone of one of the Dinosaurs, many a beast might say,
+"I, and my race perished of over specialization." To revert to the horse
+it will be remembered that this very fate is believed to have overtaken
+those almost horses the European Hippotheres; they reached a point where
+no further progress was possible, and fell by the wayside.
+
+There is, however, still another class of cases where species, families,
+orders, even, seem to have passed out of existence without sufficient
+cause. Those great marine reptiles, the Ichthyosaurs, of Europe, the
+Plesiosaurs and Mosasaurs, of our own continent, seem to have been just
+as well adapted to an aquatic life as the whales, and even better than
+the seals, and we can see no reason why Columbus should not have found
+these creatures still disporting themselves in the Gulf of Mexico. The
+best we can do is to fall back on an unknown "law of progress," and say
+that the trend of life is toward the replacement of large, lower animals
+by those smaller and intellectually higher.
+
+But _why_ there should be an allotted course to any group of animals,
+why some species come to an end when they are seemingly as well fitted
+to endure as others now living, we do not know, and if we say that a
+time comes when the germ-plasm is incapable of further subdivision, we
+merely express our ignorance in an unnecessary number of words. The
+mammoth and mastodon have already been cited as instances of animals
+that have unaccountably become extinct, and these examples are chosen
+from among many on account of their striking nature. The great ground
+sloths, the Mylodons, Megatheres, and their allies, are another case in
+point. At one period or another they reached from Oregon to Virginia,
+Florida, and Patagonia, though it is not claimed that they covered all
+this area at one time. And, while it may be freely admitted that in
+some portions of their range they may have been extirpated by a change
+in food-supply, due in turn to a change in climate, it seems
+preposterous to claim that there was not at all times, somewhere in this
+vast expanse of territory, a climate mild enough and a food-supply large
+enough for the support of even these huge, sluggish creatures. We may
+evoke the aid of primitive man to account for the disappearance of this
+race of giants, and we know that the two were coeval in Patagonia, where
+the sloths seem to have played the role of domesticated animals, but
+again it seems incredible that early man, with his flint-tipped spears
+and arrows, should have been able to slay even such slow beasts as these
+to the very last individual.
+
+Of course, in modern times man has directly exterminated many animals,
+while by the introduction of dogs, cats, pigs, and goats he has
+indirectly not only thinned the ranks of animals, but destroyed plant
+life on an enormous scale. But in the past man's capabilities for harm
+were infinitely less than now, while of course the greatest changes took
+place before man even existed, so that, while he is responsible for the
+great changes that have taken place in the world's flora and fauna
+during recent times, his influence, as a whole, has been insignificant.
+Thus, while man exterminated the great northern sea-cow, Rytina, and
+Pallas's cormorant on the Commander Islands, these animals were already
+restricted to this circumscribed area[22] by natural causes, so that man
+but finished what nature had begun. The extermination of the great auk
+in European waters was somewhat similar. There is, however, this
+unfortunate difference between extermination wrought by man and that
+brought about by natural causes: the extermination of species by nature
+is ordinarily slow, and the place of one is taken by another, while the
+destruction wrought by man is rapid, and the gaps he creates remain
+unfilled.
+
+[22] _It is possible that the cormorant may always have been confined to
+this one spot, but this is probably not the case with the sea-cow._
+
+Not so very long ago it was customary to account for changes in the past
+life of the globe by earthquakes, volcanic outbursts, or cataclysms of
+such appalling magnitude that the whole face of nature was changed, and
+entire races of living beings swept out of existence at once. But it is
+now generally conceded that while catastrophes have occurred, yet, vast
+as they may have been, their effects were comparatively local, and,
+while the life of a limited region may have been ruthlessly blotted out,
+life as a whole was but little affected. The eruption of Krakatoa shook
+the earth to its centre and was felt for hundreds of miles around, yet,
+while it caused the death of thousands of living beings, it remains to
+be shown that it produced any effect on the life of the region taken in
+its entirety.
+
+Changes in the life of the globe have been in the main slow and gradual,
+and in response to correspondingly slow changes in the level of portions
+of the earth's crust, with their far-reaching effects on temperature,
+climate, and vegetation. Animals that were what is termed plastic kept
+pace with the altering conditions about them and became modified, too,
+while those that could not adapt themselves to their surroundings died
+out.
+
+How slowly changes may take place is shown by the occurrence of a
+depression in the Isthmus of Panama, in comparatively recent geologic
+time, permitting free communication between the Atlantic and Pacific, a
+sort of natural inter-oceanic canal. And yet the alterations wrought by
+this were, so to speak, superficial, affecting only some species of
+shore fishes and invertebrates, having no influence on the animals of
+the deeper waters. Again, on the Pacific coast are now found a number of
+shells that, as we learn from fossils, were in Pliocene time common on
+both coasts of the United States, and Mr. Dall interprets this to mean
+that when this continent was rising, the steeper shore on the Pacific
+side permitted the shell-fish to move downward and adapt themselves to
+the ever changing shore, while on the Atlantic side the drying of a wide
+strip of level sea-bottom in a relatively short time exterminated a
+large proportion of the less active mollusks. And in this instance
+"relatively short" means positively long; for, compared to the rise of a
+continent from the ocean's bed, the flow of a glacier is the rapid rush
+of a mountain torrent.
+
+Then, too, while a tendency to vary seems to be inherent in animals,
+some appear to be vastly more susceptible than others to outside
+influences, to respond much more readily to any change in the world
+about them. In fact, Professor Cook has recently suggested that the
+inborn tendency to variation is sufficient in itself to account for
+evolution, this tendency being either repressed or stimulated as
+external conditions are stable or variable.
+
+The more uniform the surrounding conditions, and the simpler the animal,
+the smaller is the liability to change, and some animals that dwell in
+the depths of the ocean, where light and temperature vary little, if
+any, remain at a standstill for long periods of time.
+
+The genus Lingula, a small shell, traces its ancestry back nearly to the
+base of the Ordovician system of rocks, an almost inconceivable lapse of
+time, while one species of brachiopod shell endures unchanged from the
+Trenton Limestone to the Lower Carboniferous. In the first case one
+species has been replaced by another, so that the shell of to-day is not
+exactly like its very remote ancestor, but that the type of shell
+should have remained unchanged when so many other animals have arisen,
+flourished for a time, and perished, means that there was slight
+tendency to variation, and that the surrounding conditions were uniform.
+Says Professor Brooks, speaking of Lingula: "The everlasting hills are
+the type of venerable antiquity; but Lingula has seen the continents
+grow up, and has maintained its integrity unmoved by the convulsions
+which have given the crust of the earth its present form."
+
+Many instances of sudden but local extermination might be adduced, but
+among them that of the tile-fish is perhaps the most striking. This
+fish, belonging to a tropical family having its headquarters in the Gulf
+of Mexico, was discovered in 1879 in moderately deep water to the
+southward of Massachusetts and on the edge of the Gulf Stream, where it
+was taken in considerable numbers. In the spring of 1882 vessels
+arriving at New York reported having passed through great numbers of
+dead and dying fishes, the water being thickly dotted with them for
+miles. From samples brought in, it was found that the majority of these
+were tile-fish, while from the reports of various vessels it was shown
+that the area covered by dead fish amounted to somewhere between 5,000
+and 7,500 square miles, and the total number of dead was estimated at
+not far from _a billion_. This enormous and widespread destruction is
+believed to have been caused by an unwonted duration of northerly and
+easterly winds, which drove the cold arctic current inshore and
+southwards, chilling the warm belt in which the tile-fish resided and
+killing all in that locality. It was thought possible that the entire
+race might have been destroyed, but, while none were taken for many
+years, in 1899 and in 1900 a number were caught, showing that the
+species was beginning to reoccupy the waters from which it had been
+driven years before.
+
+The effect of any great fall in temperature on animals specially adapted
+to a warm climate is also illustrated by the destruction of the Manatees
+in the Sebastian River, Florida, by the winter of 1894-95, which came
+very near exterminating this species. Readers may remember that this was
+the winter that wrought such havoc with the blue-birds, while in the
+vicinity of Washington, D. C., the fish-crows died by hundreds, if not
+by thousands.
+
+Fishes may also be exterminated over large areas by outbursts of
+poisonous gases from submarine volcanoes, or more rarely by some vast
+lava flood pouring into the sea and actually cooking all living beings
+in the vicinity. And in the past these outbreaks took place on a much
+larger scale than now, and naturally wrought more widespread
+destruction.
+
+A recent instance of local extermination is the total destruction of a
+humming-bird, _Bellona ornata_, peculiar to the island of St. Vincent,
+by the West Indian hurricane of 1898, but this is naturally extirpation
+on a very small scale.
+
+Still, the problems of nature are so involved that while local
+destruction is ordinarily of little importance, or temporary in its
+effects, it may lead to the annihilation of a species by breaking a race
+of animals into isolated groups, thereby leading to inbreeding and slow
+decline. The European bison, now confined to a part of Lithuania and a
+portion of the Caucasus, seems to be slowly but surely approaching
+extinction in spite of all efforts to preserve the race, and no reason
+can be assigned for this save that the small size of the herds has led
+to inbreeding and general decadence.
+
+In other ways, too, local calamity may be sweeping in its effects, and
+that is by the destruction of animals that resort to one spot during the
+breeding season, like the fur-seals and some sea-birds, or pass the
+winter months in great flocks or herds, as do the ducks and elk. The
+supposed decimation of the Moas by severe winters has been already
+discussed, and the extermination of the great auk in European waters was
+indirectly due to natural causes. These birds bred on the small, almost
+inaccessible island of Eldey, off the coast of Iceland, and when,
+through volcanic disturbances, this islet sank into the sea, the few
+birds were forced to other quarters, and as these were, unfortunately,
+easily reached, the birds were slain to the last one.
+
+From the great local abundance of their remains, it has been thought
+that the curious short-legged Pliocene rhinoceros, _Aphelops fossiger_,
+was killed off in the West by blizzards when the animals were gathered
+in their winter quarters, and other long-extinct animals, too, have been
+found under such conditions as to suggest a similar fate.
+
+Among local catastrophes brought about by unusually prolonged cold may
+be cited the decimation of the fur-seal herds of the Pribilof Islands in
+1834 and 1859, when the breeding seals were prevented from landing by
+the presence of ice-floes, and perished by thousands. Peculiar interest
+is attached to this case, because the restriction of the northern
+fur-seals to a few isolated, long undiscovered islands, is believed to
+have been brought about by their complete extermination in other
+localities by prehistoric man. Had these two seasons killed all the
+seals, it would have been a reversal of the customary extermination by
+man of a species reduced in numbers by nature.
+
+In the case of large animals another element probably played a part. The
+larger the animal, the fewer young, as a rule, does it bring forth at a
+birth, the longer are the intervals between births, and the slower the
+growth of the young. The loss of two or three broods of sparrows or two
+or three litters of rabbits makes comparatively little difference, as
+the loss is soon supplied, but the death of the young of the larger and
+higher mammals is a more serious matter. A factor that has probably
+played an important role in the extinction of animals is the relation
+that exists between various animals, and the relations that also exist
+between animals and plants, so that the existence of one is dependent on
+that of another. Thus no group of living beings, plants or animals, can
+be affected without in some way affecting others, so that the injury or
+destruction of some plant may result in serious harm to some animal.
+Nearly everyone is familiar with the classic example given by Darwin of
+the effect of cats on the growth of red clover. This plant is fertilized
+by bumble bees only, and if the field mice, which destroy the nests of
+the bees, were not kept in check by cats, or other small carnivores,
+their increase would lessen the numbers of the bees and this in turn
+would cause a dearth of clover.
+
+The yuccas present a still more wonderful example of the dependence of
+plants on animals, for their existence hangs on that of a small moth
+whose peculiar structure and habits bring about the fertilization of the
+flower. The two probably developed side by side until their present
+state of inter-dependence was reached, when the extinction of the one
+would probably bring about that of the other.
+
+It is this inter-dependence of living things that makes the outcome of
+any direct interference with the natural order of things more or less
+problematical, and sometimes brings about results quite different from
+what were expected or intended.
+
+The gamekeepers on the grouse moors of Scotland systematically killed
+off all birds of prey because they caught some of the grouse, but this
+is believed to have caused far more harm than good through permitting
+weak and sickly birds, that would otherwise have fallen a prey to hawks,
+to live and disseminate the grouse distemper.
+
+The destruction of sheep by coyotes led the State of California to place
+a bounty on the heads of these animals, with the result that in
+eighteen months the State was called upon to pay out $187,485. As a
+result of the war on coyotes the animals on which they fed, notably the
+rabbits, increased so enormously that in turn a bounty was put on
+rabbits, the damage these animals caused the fruit-growers being greater
+than the losses among sheep-owners from the depredations of coyotes. And
+so, says Dr. Palmer, "In this remarkable case of legislation a large
+bounty was offered by a county in the interest of fruit-growers to
+counteract the effects of a State bounty expended mainly for the benefit
+of sheep-owners!"
+
+Professor Shaler, in noting the sudden disappearance of such trees as
+the gums, magnolias, and tulip poplars from the Miocene flora of Europe
+has suggested that this may have been due to the attacks, for a series
+of years, of some insect enemy like the gipsy moth, and the theory is
+worth considering, although it must be looked upon as a possibility
+rather than a probability. Still, anyone familiar with the ravages of
+the gipsy moth in Massachusetts, where the insect was introduced by
+accident, can readily imagine what _might_ have been the effect of some
+sudden increase in the numbers of such a pest on the forests of the
+past. Trees might resist the attacks of enemies and the destruction of
+their leaves for two or three years, but would be destroyed by a few
+additional seasons of defoliation.
+
+Ordinarily the abnormal increase of any insect is promptly followed by
+an increase in the number of its enemies; the pest is killed off, the
+destroyers die of starvation and nature's balance is struck. But if by
+some accident, such as two or three consecutive seasons of wet, drought,
+or cold, the natural increase of the enemies was checked, the balance of
+nature would be temporarily destroyed and serious harm done. That such
+accidents may occur is familiar to us by the damage wrought in Florida
+and other Southern States by the unwonted severity of the winters of
+1893, 1895, and 1899.
+
+If any group of forest trees was destroyed in the manner suggested by
+Professor Shaler, the effects would be felt by various plants and
+animals. In the first place, the insects that fed on these trees would
+be forced to seek another source of food and would be brought into a
+silent struggle with forms already in possession, while the destruction
+of one set of plants would be to the advantage of those with which they
+came into competition and to the disadvantage of vegetation that was
+protected by the shade. Finally, these changed conditions would react in
+various ways on the smaller birds and mammals, the general effect being,
+to use a well-worn simile, like that of casting a stone into a quiet
+pool and setting in motion ripples that sooner or later reach to every
+part of the margin.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to warn the reader that for the most part this
+is purely conjectural, for from the nature of the case it is bound to be
+so. But it is one of the characteristics of educated man that he wishes
+to know the why and wherefore of everything, and is in a condition of
+mental unhappiness until he has at least formulated some theory which
+seems to harmonize with the visible facts. And from the few glimpses we
+get of the extinction of animals from natural causes we must formulate a
+theory to fit the continued extermination that has been taking place
+ever since living beings came into the world and were pitted against one
+another and against their surroundings in the silent and ceaseless
+struggle for existence.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_The asterisk denotes that the animal or object is figured on or
+opposite the page referred to._
+
+
+    AEpyornis, egg of, 145, 148,* 147, 157
+      eggs found in swamps, 148;
+        found floating, 148
+      eggs used for bowls, 145
+      origin of fable of Roc, 144, 145
+
+    Alaskan Live Mammoth Story, 190-193, 197
+
+    Anomoepus tracks, 39
+
+    Apteryx egg, 147
+
+    Archaeopteryx, description of, 77, 78
+      discovery of, 77
+      earliest known bird, 70
+      restoration, 89*
+      specimens of, 70,* 88
+      wing, 72,* 73
+
+    Archelon, a great turtle, 54
+
+
+    Basilosaurus, 60
+      See also Zeuglodon
+
+    Beehler, L. W., 209, 213
+
+    Birds, always clad in feathers, 71, 127
+      earliest, 70
+
+    Birds, first intimation of, 76
+      rarity of fossil, 86, 87
+      related to reptiles, 92
+      wings of embryonic, 73
+      with teeth, 79, 88
+
+    Bison, European, 231
+
+    Books of reference, xix, 17, 32, 47, 69, 89, 110, 137, 158, 176,
+      197, 218
+
+    Breeding of large animals, 233
+
+    Brontornis, size of leg-bones, 149
+
+    Brontosaurus, size of bones, 96,* 97,* 109
+
+    Brooks, W. K., on Lingula, 229
+
+    Buffalo legend, 216
+
+    Buttons as vestigial structures, 202
+
+
+    Carcharodon auriculatus, 66
+      teeth, 66
+      megalodon, 65
+      estimated size, 66
+      teeth, 65, 67
+
+    Carson City footprints, 45
+
+    Casts, how formed, 10, 11
+
+    Cats and clover, 234
+
+    Cephalaspis, 24*
+
+    Ceratosaurus, habits, 106
+      restoration, 106*
+      skull, 110*
+
+    Changes in Nature slow, 227
+
+    Cheirotherium, 43
+
+    Chlamydosaurus, 129
+
+    Claosaurus. See Thespesius
+
+    Climate, changes in western United States, 174
+
+    Clover and cats, 234
+
+    Cold, effects of, on animals, 230, 231, 233
+
+    Cold winters, 230
+
+    Collecting fossils, 17, 112-116
+
+    Color of large land animals, 134
+      of young animals, 136
+
+    Covering of extinct animals sometimes indicated, 131, 132
+
+    Coyotes, effect of their destruction on fruit, 236
+
+
+    Dall, W. H., theory as to extinction of mollusks, 227
+
+    Dinosaurs, bones of, 109, 110
+      brain of, 93
+      collections of, 109
+      compared to marsupials, 95
+      first discovered, 90
+      food required by, 98
+      hip-bones mistaken for shoulder-blade, 120
+      Professor Marsh's epitaph for, 222
+      range, 92
+      recognized as new order of reptiles, 91
+      related to ostrich and alligator, 91
+      size of, 95, 96, 98
+      tracks, ascribed to birds, 38
+
+    Dinotherium, 200
+
+    Diplodocus, estimated weight, 99
+      supposed habits, 99
+
+
+    Egg of AEpyornis, 147, 148;
+      Apteryx, 147;
+      Ostrich, 146;
+      Moa, 148
+
+    Eggs, casts of, 87
+
+    Elephant, size, 180
+      size of tusks, 181, 182
+
+    Elephas ganesa, tusks, 196
+
+    Encrustations, 14
+
+    Extermination. See Extinction
+
+    Extinction, ascribed to great convulsions, 225
+      ascribed to primitive man, 188, 224
+      of Dinosaurs, 221
+      local, 225
+      by man, 224, 225
+      of Marine Reptiles, 222
+      often unaccountable, 222, 223
+      of Pliocene rhinoceros, 232
+      sometimes evolution, 221, 226
+      of Titanotheres, 222
+
+
+    Feathers, imprints of, 76, 132
+
+    Fishes, abundance of, 25
+      armored, 23, 24, 25, 28
+      collections of, 32
+      killed by cold, 230
+      killed by volcanoes, 231
+
+    Fish-crows, killed by cold, 231
+
+    Flesh does not petrify, 10
+
+    Flightless birds, absent from Tasmania, 155
+      present distribution, 154, 155
+      relation between flightlessness and size, 156
+
+    Folds and frills, 129
+
+    Footprints, collections of, 47
+      books on, 47
+      See also under Tracks
+
+    Fossil birds, rarity of, 86
+
+    Fossil man, 13
+
+    Fossilization a slow process, 10
+
+    Fossils, conditions under which they are formed, 5, 7
+      collecting, 112-116
+      definition of, 1
+      deformation of, 16
+      impressions, 2, 3
+      not necessarily petrifactions, 2
+      preparation of, 117-119
+      why they are not more common, 5, 15, 16
+
+    Fowls, muscles of, 81
+
+    Frill of Triceratops, 102
+
+    Fur-seals killed by ice-floes, 233
+
+
+    Gar pikes, destruction of, 26
+
+    Giant birds, reasons for distribution and flightlessness, 153
+
+    Giant Moa, 141
+      leg compared with that of horse, 152*
+
+    Giant Sloth, domesticated by man, 224
+      struggle between, 46
+
+    Giant Sloth, tracks at Carson City, 46
+
+    Gilfort, Robert, 157
+
+    Great Auk, extermination of, 232
+
+    Grouse on Scotch moors, 235
+
+
+    Hawkins, B. W., restorations by, 137
+
+    Hesperornis, description of, 80
+      impressions of feathers, 132
+      position of legs, 83, 84
+      restoration of, 82*
+
+    Hippotherium, 166, 167
+
+    Hoactzin, habits of, 74, 75*
+
+    Horn does not petrify, 130
+
+    Horse, abundant in Pleistocene time, 164
+      books on, 176
+      of bronze age, 163, 167
+      collections of fossil, 176
+      development of, 167, 168,* 175
+      differences between fossil and living, 163
+      early domestication, 165
+      evidence as to genealogy, 170-173
+      extra-toed, 172, 173
+      found in South America in 1530, 165
+      of Julius Caesar, 172
+      none found wild in historic times, 165
+      Pliocene, 166
+      possibility of existence in America up to the time of its
+        discovery, 169, 170
+      primitive, 160, 161*
+
+    Horse, sketched by primitive man, 163
+      teeth of, 170
+      three-toed, 166
+
+    Humming-bird, exterminated by hurricane, 231
+
+    Hydrarchus, 62*
+
+    Hyracotherium, 160, 161,* 170, 174
+
+
+    Ichthyosaurs, silhouettes of, 132
+
+    Iguanodons, found at Bernissart, 104
+
+    Impressions of feathers, 131
+      of scales, 131
+      of skin, 131
+
+    Inbreeding, effects of, 231, 232
+
+    Information, sources of, xvi
+
+    Innuits, habits, 192
+
+    Interdependence of animals and plants, 234, 235, 238
+
+    Ivory, fossil, 2, 4, 188, 189
+
+
+    Jaw of Mosasaur, 54*
+      of reptiles, 53
+
+
+    Killing of the Mammoth, story, 177, 193
+
+    Kimmswick, deposit of Mastodon bones, 209
+
+    Knight, Charles R., restorations by, xviii, 136
+
+    Koch's Hydrarchus, 61, 62*
+      Missourium, 207,* 208
+
+
+    Leaves, impressions of, 3, 13
+
+    Leg of Brontornis, 149*
+
+    Leg of the Great Brontosaurus, 96*
+      of Giant Moa, 152*
+      position in Hesperornis, 83
+      position in ducks, 84
+
+    Lenape Stone, 215, 216, 219*
+
+    Life, earliest traces of, 21, 34
+
+    Lingula, antiquity of, 228
+      Professor Brooks on, 229
+
+    Loricaria, 24*
+
+
+    Mammoth, adapted to a cold climate, 134
+      Alaskan Live, Story, 190
+      believed to live underground, 178
+      bones taken for those of giants, 185
+      contemporary with man, 189
+      derivation of name, 178
+      description, 179
+      discovery of entire specimens, 183, 187
+      distribution, 184, 186
+      drawn by early man, 189, 197*
+      entire specimens obtainable, 194
+      reasons for extermination, 188
+      killing of the, 177
+      literature on, 197
+      misconception as to size, 179
+      mounted skeleton, 179
+      not now living, 190
+      preservation of remains, 187
+      skeletons in Alaska, 181, 195
+
+    Mammoth, in Chicago Academy of Sciences, 179
+      at St. Petersburg, 183*
+      restoration, 176*
+      size, 179, 180, 181
+      size of tusks, 181, 196
+      teeth, 196, 199*
+      teeth dredged in North Sea, 184
+      tusks brought into market, 188, 189
+
+    Man contemporary with Mammoth, 189
+      fossil, 13
+      of Guadeloupe, 13
+
+    Manatees killed by cold, 230
+
+    Marsh, Prof. O. C., collection of fossil horses, 176
+      on Dinosaurs, 222
+      on toothed birds, 79, 89
+
+    Mastodon, bones taken for those of giants, 205
+      thought to be carnivorous, 206
+      covering, 210
+      description, 210
+      distribution, 203, 210, 212
+      extinction, 212
+      literature, 218
+      and man, 215, 216
+      first noticed in America, 204
+      origin unknown, 202
+      remains abundant, 208, 209
+      remains in Ulster and Orange counties, New York, 204, 206
+      restoration, 210*
+
+    Mastodon, size, 211
+      skeletons on exhibition, 218
+      species, 203
+      teeth, 198, 199,* 218
+      tusks, 199, 200
+
+    Mesohippus, 167
+
+    Mimicry, not conscious, 128
+
+    Missourium of Koch, 207,* 208
+
+    Moas, collections of, 156, 157
+      contemporary with man, 143, 144
+      deductions from distribution, 143
+      destruction of, 143, 144
+      discovery of bones, 140
+      elephant-footed, 142
+      feathers of, 141
+      Giant, 141
+      supposed food of, 142
+      legends of, 139, 140
+      literature, 158
+      scientific names, 146
+      size of, 141
+      species of, 141
+
+    Moloch, an Australian lizard, 100*
+
+    Mosasaurs, abundance of, in Kansas, 52
+      books on, 69
+      collections of, 68
+      extinction of, 56
+      first discovery, 50
+      jaw of, 54*
+
+    Mosasaurs, range of, 49
+      restoration, 52*
+      size of, 49, 50
+
+    Mylodon tracks at Carson City, 45
+
+
+    Names, scientific, reasons for using, xvi, xvii
+
+    Nature, balance of, 238
+
+    Nuts, fossil, 11
+
+
+    Oldest animals, 21
+      vertebrates, 19, 22
+
+    Ostrich egg, 147
+
+    Over-specialization, 221, 222
+
+
+    Peale, C. W., 205
+
+    Peale, Rembrandt, 205, 206
+
+    Pelican, mandible, 53
+
+    Penguins, depend on fat for warmth, 127
+      feathers highly modified, 128
+      swim with wings, 80
+
+    Petrified bodies, 10
+
+    Phororhacos, description of, 149
+      mistaken for mammal, 149
+      Patagonian bird, 148
+      related to heron family, 152
+      restoration, frontispiece
+      skull, 150, 151*
+
+    Protohippus, 166
+
+    Pteraspis, 28
+
+    Pterichthys, 25, 28, 32*
+      mistaken for crab, 25
+
+    Pterodactyls, impressions of wings, 133
+      from Kansas, 55
+      wing, 72*
+
+    Pycraft, W. P., restoration of Archaeopteryx, 89
+
+
+    Radiolarians, 15, 17*
+
+    Reconstruction of animals, 127, 130, 134
+
+    Reptiles, fasting powers of, 98
+      growth throughout life, 102
+      jaws, 53
+
+    Restorations, xviii
+      Archaeopteryx, 89*
+      Ceratosaurus, 106*
+      Hesperornis, 82*
+      Mammoth, 176*
+      Mastodon, 210*
+      Phororhacos, frontispiece
+      progress in, 137
+      Stegosaurus, 108*
+      Thespesius, 90*
+      Triceratops, 126*
+      Tylosaurus, 52*
+
+    Reversion of fancy stock, 171
+
+    Rhinoceros, exterminated by cold, 232
+
+    Roc, legend of, 144, 145
+
+    Rocks, thickness of sedimentary, 20
+
+    Ruffles on dresses, 202
+
+
+    Schuchert, Charles, on collecting fossils, 17
+      collector of Zeuglodon bones, 63
+
+    Seals, covering of, 128
+
+    Sea-serpent, belief in, 56
+      possibility of existence, 57
+
+    Shaler, Professor, on changes in Miocene flora of Europe, 236, 237
+
+    Sharks, early, 31
+      Great-toothed, 65
+      known from spines and teeth, 29
+      Port Jackson, 29
+      teeth of, 69
+      White, or Man-Eater, 65
+
+    Skeleton, basis of all restorations, 127
+      best testimony of animal's relationships, 124
+      information to be derived from, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127
+      a problem in mechanics, 102, 124
+      reconstruction of, 120
+      relation of, to exterior of animal, 121, 127
+      of Triceratops, 103,* 121
+
+    Spines and plates, 130
+
+    Stegosaurus, description of, 106
+      restoration of, 108*
+
+    Survival of the fittest, 173
+
+
+    Teeth, birds with, 79
+      of gnawing animals, 169, 200
+      of grass-eaters, 169
+
+    Teeth, of horse, 170
+      of mammoth, 198, 199*
+      of mastodon, 198, 199*
+      of sharks, 29, 30
+      of Thespesius, 105
+
+    Thespesius, abundance of, 104, 105
+      brain of, 93
+      (Same as Claosaurus)
+      engulfed in quicksand, 8
+      impressions of skin, 132
+      restoration of, 90*
+      teeth of, 105
+      at Yale, 109
+
+    Tiger, preying on reindeer, 134
+
+    Tile-fish, destruction of, 230
+
+    Titanichthys, 28, 29
+
+    Toothed birds, collections of, 88
+      discovery of, 79
+
+    Townsend C. H., 190-192
+
+    Tracks, ascribed to birds, 38
+      ascribed to giants, 45
+      animals known from, 41
+      collections of, 47
+      of Connecticut Valley, 37
+      deductions from, 44
+      of Dinosaurs, 38,* 40,* 41, 47*
+      discovery in England and America, 37, 42
+      how formed, 35, 40
+      at Hastings, 44
+
+    Tracks, of Mylodon, 46
+      of worms, 3, 33
+
+    Triceratops, brain, 94
+      broken horn, 102
+      description, 100, 101
+      restoration, 126*
+      skeleton, 103*
+
+    Tufa, 14
+
+    Tukeman, killing of the Mammoth, 177, 193
+
+
+    Variation in animals, 228
+
+    Vertebrates, oldest, 22
+
+    Vestigial structures, 201, 202
+
+    Volcanic outbursts, 231, 232
+
+
+    Webster, F. S., on destruction of gar pikes, 26
+
+    White, C. A., on the nature and uses of fossils, 17
+
+    White Shark, 65
+
+    Wings, 71, 72,* 73
+      of embryonic birds, 73
+
+    Wood, fossil, 9, 10
+
+    Worm trails, 3, 33
+
+
+    Yucca, fertilization, 235
+
+
+    Zeuglodon, abundance of remains, 60
+      same as Basilosaurus
+      description, 58, 63
+      habits, 59
+
+    Zeuglodon, Koch's restoration, 62
+      name, 58, 69
+      once numerous, 60
+      size, 58
+      specimen of, 68
+      structure of bones, 64
+      teeth, 58, 69*
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Animals of the Past, by Frederic A. Lucas
+
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