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No one before had drawn such vast conclusions from the local phenomena of the Alpine valleys. "The surface of Europe," says Agassiz, "adorned before by a tropical vegetation and inhabited by troops of large elephants, enormous hippopotami, and gigantic carnivora, was suddenly buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains, lakes, seas and plateaus.
As in Europe, the early inhabitants of America had to contend with powerful mammals and fierce carnivora; and in the West as in the East man made up in intelligence for his lack of brute force, and however formidable an animal might be, it was condemned to submit to, or disappear before, its master.
This was an imitation of the noises made by the carnivora at the Zoological Gardens at feeding-time; the idea was taken up by prisoner after prisoner until the whole place was alive with barkings, yappings, roarings, pelican chatterings, and feline yowlings, interspersed with shrieks of hysterical laughter. To many in that crowded solitude it came as an extraordinary relief.
The places where the developing embryos depart from the common mode show where the several divisions took leave of one another in their evolution, a point that comes out with great clearness when the facts of mammalian development are broadly compared. The embryos of carnivora and rodents and hoofed animals are alike in their earlier development, and their agreement means a community of origin.
With their eyes fixed on the carnivora, they pay no attention to the reptiles; happily, they abandon to the writers of comedy the shading and colorings of a Chardin des Lupeaulx.
It's an attitude that one may understand even now, he said, when one faces the spring of one of the larger carnivora; and Ellen thrilled to hear him refer to this as Edinburgh folk refer to a wrestle with the east wind.
The carnivora also may have to suffer from the absence of prey, but even in the most favourable seasons, and in the regions where the animals on which they live abound, it is necessary to them to develop a special activity to obtain possession of beings who are suspicious, prompt in flight, and as fleet as themselves.
Here we were free from the attacks of the large land carnivora; but the smaller flying reptiles, the snakes, leopards, and panthers were a constant menace, though by no means as much to be feared as the huge beasts that roamed the surface of the earth.
"Yes, to be sure; the great African lion itself is nothing but the largest and strongest of all the cat tribe. Didn't you know that?" "I thought the lion was a beast by itself; but, at all events, it is the king of mammals?" "It is rightly thought to be the strongest of all the carnivora: its head, which it carries upright, and its beautiful mane, give it a majestic appearance.
You might as well ask a man to eat molecules with a pair of chopsticks, as to try to interest me about the less carnivora, when I know of what is before me." "I see," I said. "You want big things that you can make your teeth meet in? How would you like to breakfast on an elephant?" "What ridiculous nonsense you are talking?" He was getting too wide awake, so I thought I would press him hard.
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