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For we know that Europe in ancient times was peopled by numerous marsupials; and I have shown in the publications above alluded to, that in America the law of distribution of terrestrial mammals was formerly different from what it now is.
Of the power and diversity of form of these old reptiles we have generally no adequate conception. The forms now living are but feeble remnants. There were huge sea-serpents, and forms like our present crocodiles, but far more powerful. Others apparently resembled in form and habit the herbivorous and carnivorous mammals of to-day. Others strode or leaped on two legs.
Coues says that we should bear in mind that this was written "when bats were birds and whales were fishes for most persons." The journal confounds bats, which are winged mammals, with goatsuckers, or whippoorwills, which are birds. The second of July was an interesting date for the explorers. On that day we find the following entry in their journal: "A shower of rain fell very early this morning.
Now the lady merely smoked and chuckled. When I again uttered "Well?" with a tinge of rebuke, she came down from her musing, but into another and distant field. It was the field of natural history, of zoology, of vertebrates, mammals, furred quadrupeds or, in short, skunks. One may as well be blunt in this matter.
If we suppose that the ancient progenitor, the archetype as it may be called, of all mammals, had its limbs constructed on the existing general pattern, for whatever purpose they served, we can at once perceive the plain signification of the homologous construction of the limbs throughout the whole class.
While the work was going on other marmots were watching us curiously from half a dozen mounds, and we set nine traps before it was time to return for dinner. The two Chinese taxidermists had taken a hundred wooden traps for smaller mammals, and before dark we inspected the places they had found. He was only ten inches long and covered with soft yellow-white fur.
Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological formation, different forest timber, and different birds, even with different mammals. Neither the little gray rabbit nor the little gray fox is found in my locality, but the great northern hare and the red fox are.
Not later than 400 A. D., for that was when the period of desiccation, or drought from the recession of the glacial waters, began. "The existence of man in the Glacial Period is established," says Winchell, the great western geologist, "that implies man during the period when flourished the large mammals now extinct.
This and other causes acted to place the Placentals in the "Royal line" from which Man was evolved. The following families of Placental Mammals are recognized by Science, each having its own structural peculiarities: The Edentata, or Toothless creatures, among which are the sloths, ant-eaters, armadillos, etc. These animals seem to be closer to the Monotremes than they are to the Marsupials;
The development of diversified situations on the earth, the varieties of climate, the variation between marsh and upland, between valley and plateau, furnish a complexity of environment into each niche of which a new form of animal fitted itself. With the increased complexity of mammals comes the submergence of the reptiles and amphibians to-day. In all sorts of situations we find mammals.
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