Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/493

Rh on the contrary, he carried a forehead most rascally high, and surmounted by a pair of horns that were murderously straight and sharp. Prof. Cope speaks of this species as the most formidably armed, and as presenting a most outré appearance in life. It can be scarcely doubted that his eminence was held in great consideration by the Symborodon people, and that they gave him a wide berth when he went out to take a constitutional.

Another of these beasts enjoys the name of Symborodon trigonocerus. His horns were three-sided, like a bayonet. To be sure, they were short, and rolled outward, which made them harmless in comparison with the former. This was a large beast, but not so large as Symborodon bucco.

The smallest of these creatures was Symborodon acer. Poor little fellow! How they must have looked down upon him! He was not as big as the Indian rhinoceros. But he had his own revenge for this condition of sub-mediocrity. His horns were very long and round. Indeed, he could boast of this accomplishment. And it was notable that he always kept the fact plainly before his eyes. He had the longest horns of them all, and carried them one on each side of his nasal extremity; and it was generally understood that, when Symborodon acer turned up his nose, he meant mischief.

Speaking of the above group, says Prof. Cope: "Thus it is evident that Symborodon is a true perissodactyle, allied to the Rhinoceridœ." To have discovered and worked out this one group alone should give a man glory enough for one lifetime. And yet we are far from having exhausted the list of ungulates. There are Oreodon, two species; Poëbrotherium, two species; Septomeryx, and many others, all cloven-footed beasts; and about these we have said nothing.

But there is still one mammal to be mentioned; and thereby hangs a tail, for it is a monkey. It is a little fellow, but with a big name you may depend, as witness—Menotherium lemurinum. Unless his name mislead, he was a nimble beast, and, with the lemur instinct, a night-prowler at that; for his anatomy connects him with the Lemurs, the lowest of the monkeys, and, if we mistake not, there were Nasuan relations also, as with those fossil monkeys obtained by Cope, in the Eocene strata in the Bridger beds on Black's Fork, Wyoming.

Thus much for these new mammals, so remarkable in numbers and character. But the reptiles were largely represented also; for there were serpents, lizards, and turtles, found in those Colorado beds. Of the snakes, one, a Neurodromicus, was as large as the black snake;