206 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



the dominant types of a fauna as rich, varied, 

 and impressive as only that of Africa is to-day. 

 Wlien I speak of "elephant," *'lion," and 

 "horse" I am speaking of the beasts themselves, 

 not their names in our vernacular. As regards 

 two of these three animals, the horse and the 

 big horse-killing cat, we have no common names 

 to include the various species; whereas in the 

 remaining case we have such a common name 

 to include the two widely separate existing 

 species, although we use different names to des- 

 ignate two well-known fossil species. We speak 

 of both the Indian and the African probos- 

 cidians as elephants, although we style "mam- 

 moth" the recently extinct hairy elephant of 

 the north, which was more closely related to the 

 Asiatic elephant than the latter is to its African 

 cousin, and although we use the word "masto- 

 don" to denote a more primitive type of elephant 

 also recently extinct in America. We have no 

 such common term either for the various big 

 cats or for the various horses. Yet the African 

 and Asiatic elephants are far more widely sep- 

 arated from one another than the lion is from 

 the tiger, or even from the jaguar. They are 

 far more widely separated than horses, asses, 

 and zebras are from one another. As regards 

 both the horses and the big cats which have 



