Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/712

692, leaves the Old World Edentates, fossil and recent, unaccounted for; but I believe the solution of this problem is essentially the same, namely, a migration from North America. The Miocene representatives of this group, which I have recently obtained in Oregon, are older than any known in Europe, and, strangely enough, are more like the latter and the existing African types than like any of our living species. If, now, we bear in mind that an elevation of only 180 feet would close Behring's Straits, and give a road thirty miles wide from America to Asia, we can easily see how this migration might have taken place. That such a Tertiary bridge did exist, we have much independent testimony, and the known facts all point to extensive migrations of animals over it.

The Cetacea are connected with the marine Carnivores through the genus Zeuglodon, as Huxley has shown, and the points of resemblance are so marked that the affinity cannot be doubted. That the connection was a direct one, however, is hardly probable, since the diminutive brain, large number of simple teeth, and reduced limbs in the whales, all indicate them to be an old type, which doubtless branched off from the more primitive stock leading to the Carnivores. Our American extinct Cetaceans, when carefully investigated, promise to throw much light upon the pedigree of these strange mammals. As most of the known forms were probably marine, their distribution is of little service in determining their origin.

That the Sirenians are allied to the Ungulates is now generally admitted by anatomists, and the separation of the existing species in distant localities suggests that they are the remnants of an extensive group, once widely distributed. The large number of teeth in some forms, the reduced limbs, and other characters, point back to an ancestry near that of the earliest Ungulates. The gradual loss of teeth in the specialized members of this group, and in the Cetaceans, is quite parallel with the same change in Edentates, as well as in Pterodactyles and Birds.

The Ungulates are so distinct from other groups that they must be one of the oldest natural divisions of mammals, and they probably originated from some herbivorous marsupial. Their large size, and great numbers, during Tertiary and Post-Tertiary time, render them most valuable in tracing migrations induced by climate, as well as in showing the changes of structure which such a contest for existence may produce.

In the review of the extinct Ungulates, I have endeavored to show that quite a number of genera, usually supposed to belong originally to the Old World, are in reality true American types. Among these were the horse, rhinoceros, and tapir, all the existing odd-toed Ungulates, and, besides these, the camel, pig, and deer. All these I believe, and many others, went to Asia from our Northwest coast. It must, for the present, remain an open question whether we may not fairly