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High up in the hemlock forests is the interesting Alpine three-toed woodpecker. It looks very much like Cabanis's, only it has three toes in place of four, and a yellow crown instead of a black and red one. In importance after the woodpeckers come the members of the sparrow family that inhabit the Tahoe region.
The Coryphodon appears to have been allied to the Miocene and later Tapirs, while Pliolophus, in its skull and dentition, curiously partakes of both artiodactyle and perissodactyle characters; the third trochanter upon its femur, and its three-toed hind foot, however, appear definitely to fix its position in the latter division.
Upon a long table lay a victim even as I was ushered into the room. Several Mahars stood about the poor creature holding him down so that he could not move. Another, grasping a sharp knife with her three-toed fore foot, was laying open the victim's chest and abdomen. No anesthetic had been administered and the shrieks and groans of the tortured man were terrible to hear.
"That there," she glibly rattled off, "is the organic remains of a three-toed woolly bronsolumphicus of the carboniferous limestone, or Upper Silurian trilobite period. I believe I have the name correct. It was dug up out of a dry lake in Wyoming that years ago got to be mere loblolly, so that this unfortunate critter bogged down in it.
We have thus arrived at the Middle Eocene formation, and yet have traced back the Horses only to a three-toed stock; but these three-toed forms, no less than the Equine quadrupeds themselves, present rudiments of the two other toes which appertain to what I have termed the "average" quadruped.
They were wiser also in many ways, for they had found out many things for themselves which is the very best sort of wisdom. Now even Dodo could tell by the footprints on the sand whether a three-toed Plover or a four-toed Sandpiper had been pattering there.
The districts frequented by these three-toed creatures, and which seem most suitable to their habits, are those tracts of campo where the soil is a heavy loam or clay, and the vegetation luxuriant.
Upon a long table lay a victim even as I was ushered into the room. Several Mahars stood about the poor creature holding him down so that he could not move. Another, grasping a sharp knife with her three-toed fore foot, was laying open the victim's chest and abdomen. No anesthetic had been administered and the shrieks and groans of the tortured man were terrible to hear.
In the former experiment on the dog some faint resistance on the part of Nature was observed, as if existence struggled for superiority, but in the following instance of the sloth life sunk in death without the least apparent contention, without a cry, without a struggle and without a groan. This was an ai, or three-toed sloth.
A small specimen from Rainy Chamber, placed beside one of the same color from Wind Cave, shows them to be absolutely alike. Rainy Chamber is the room in which the bones of the three-toed horse, already referred to, were found, but their presence has not yet been explained; therefore the case is open to conjecture and several theories may be advanced and their values considered.
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