Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/713

Rh claim the Bovidæ, and even the Proboscidea, since both occur in our strata at about the same horizon as on the other continent. On this point there is some confusion, at least in names. The Himalayan deposits called upper Miocene, and so rich in Proboscidians, indicate in their entire fauna that they are more recent than our Niobrara River beds, which, for apparently good reasons, we regard as lower Pliocene. The latter appear to be about the same horizon as the Pikermi deposits in Greece, also regarded as Miocene. Believing, however, that we have here a more complete Tertiary series, and a better standard for comparison of faunas, I have preferred to retain the names already applied to our divisions, until the strata of the two continents are more satisfactorily coördinated.

The extinct Rodents, Bats, and Insectivores of America, although offering many suggestive hints as to their relationship with other groups, and their various migrations, cannot now be fully discussed. There is little doubt, however, that the Rodents are a New World type, and, according to present evidence, they probably had their origin in North America. The resemblance in so many respects of this order to the Proboscidians is a striking fact, not yet explained by the imperfectly known genealogy of either group.

The Carnivores, too, I must pass by, except to call attention to a few special forms which accompanied the migrations of other groups. One of these is Machairodus, the sabre-toothed tiger, which flourished in our Miocene and Pliocene, and apparently followed the huge Edentates to South America, and the Ungulates across Asia to Europe. With this genus went Hyæodon, and some typical wolves and cats, but the bears probably came the other way with the antelopes. That the gazelle, giraffe, hippopotamus, hyena, and other African types, once abundant in Asia, did not come, is doubtless because the Miocene bridge was submerged before they reached it.

The Edentates, in their southern migration, were probably accompanied by the horse, tapir, and rhinoceros, although no remains of the last have yet been found south of Mexico. The mastodon, elephant, llama, deer, peccary, and other mammals, followed the same path. Why the mastodon, elephant, rhinoceros, and especially the horse, should have been selected with the huge Edentates for extinction, and the other Ungulates left, is at present a mystery, which their somewhat larger size hardly explains.

The relations of the American Primates, extinct and recent, to those of the other hemisphere, offer an inviting topic, but it is not within my present province to discuss them in their most suggestive phases. As we have here the oldest and most generalized members of the group, so far as now known, we may justly claim America for the birthplace of the order. That the development did not continue here until it culminated in man, was due to causes which at present we can only surmise, although the genealogy of other surviving groups gives