PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 751 



splints that the horse still reveals to us that he belongs to the three- 

 toed animals. 



A far different race from the Herbivora is the large army of flesh- 

 feeders, which we find throughout all past ages harassing and destroy- 

 ing the vegetable-feeders on all sides. And yet it would not be fair 

 to speak of these larger flesh-feeding animals as if they had worked 

 nothing but evil to their more peaceful neighbors, for how would Life 

 educate her children if she put no difficulties in their way to be con- 

 quered, no sufferings to be endured ? It was in the long struggle for 

 life that the animals with the largest and strongest horns got the upper 

 hand, that the swiftest horses or antelopes survived and left young 

 ones ; while we must remember that it is more often the sickly, worn- 

 out, and diseased animals that fall a prey to the devourers, and their 

 life is ended far less painfully than if they dragged themselves into 

 some hole to die. 



" On revient toujours d ses premiers amours" says the French song. 

 But who would have thought that, after rising step by step above the 

 fish, and tracing the history of the backboned animals through their 

 development in the air and over the land till we brought them to a 

 state of intelligence second only to man, we should have to follow 

 them back again to the water and find the highly-gifted milk-givers 

 taking on the form and appearance of fishes ? Nevertheless it is so, 

 for seals and whales are as truly flesh-eating milk-givers as bears and 

 wolves. "Do you really mean, then," exclaim nearly all people who 

 are not naturalists, " that a whale is not a huge fish ? " Certainly I 

 do ! A whale is no more a fish than crocodiles, penguins, or seals, are 

 fishes, although they too live chiefly in the water. 



A whale is a warm-blooded, air-breathing, milk-giving animal. Its 

 fins are hands with finger-bones, having a large number of joints ; its 

 tail is a piece of cartilage, and not a fish's fin with bones and rays ; it 

 has teeth in its gums, even if it never cuts them ; and it gives suck to 

 its little one just as much as a cow does to her calf. Nay, the whale- 

 bone whales have even the traces of hind legs entirely buried under 

 the skin, and in the Greenland whale the hip-joint and knee-joint can 

 be distinguished with some of their muscles, though the bones are 

 quite hidden and useless. 



There was once a time when the great army of milk-givers had its 

 difficulties and failures as well as all the other groups, only these came 

 upon them not from other animals, but from the influence of snow and 

 ice. 



For we know that, from the time of tropical Europe, a change was 

 creeping, during long ages, over the whole northern hemisphere. The 

 climate grew colder and colder, the tropical plants and animals were 

 driven back or died away, glaciers grew larger, and snow deeper and 

 more lasting, till large sheets of ice covered Northern Europe, and in 

 America the whole of the country as far south as New York. 



