CHAPTER VIII 



PRIMEVAL IVIAN; AND THE HORSE, THE 

 LION, AND THE ELEPHANT 



TO say that progress goes on and has 

 gone on at unequal speed in different 

 continents, so far as human society is 

 concerned, is so self-evident as to be trite. Yet, 

 after all, we hardly visuahze even this fact to 

 ourselves; and we laymen, at least, often either 

 disregard or else frankly forget the further 

 fact that this statement is equally true as re- 

 gards the prehistory of mankind and as re- 

 gards the paleontological history of the great 

 beasts with which he has been associated on 

 the different continents during the last two or 

 three hundred thousand years. In history, a 

 given century may on one continent mean 

 what on another continent was meant by a 

 century that came a thousand years before or 

 a thousand years later. In prehistory and 

 paleontology there is the same geographical dif- 

 ference as regards the rapidity of development 

 in time. 



190 



