244 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



so many points resembled that of Asia. It was 

 natural that a collateral ancestor of the present 

 Asiatic pheasant-like birds should dwell beside 

 a collateral ancestor of the present Asiatic 

 tiger.^ 



Moreover, the tar-pools hold human bones. 

 These, however, are probably of much later 

 date than the magnificent fauna above de- 

 scribed, perhaps onl^^ a few thousand years old. 

 They belong to a rather advanced type of man. 

 It is probable that before man came to Amer- 

 ica at all, the earlier types had died out in 

 Eurasia, or had been absorbed and developed, 

 or else had been thrust southward into Africa, 

 Tasmania, Australia, and remote forest tracts 

 of Indo-Malaysia, where, being such back- 

 ward savages, they never developed anything 

 remotely resembling a civilization. It was 

 probably people kin to some of the later cave- 



^ Professor J. C. Merriam, of the University of California, first studied 

 this fauna. The excavations are now being carried on by Director 

 Frank S. Daggett, of the capital Museum of Los Angeles County. I 

 have spoken above of the vast herds of game encountered over a cen- 

 tury ago by Lewis and Clark on the upper Missouri. The journals of 

 these two explorers form an American classic, and they have found a 

 worthy editor in Reuben Gold Thwaites; there could not be an edition 

 more satisfactory from every standpoint — including that of good taste. 

 In anthropology I follow the views of Fairfield Osborne and Ales 

 Hfdlicka; I am not competent to decide as to the points where they 

 differ; and they would be the first to say that some of the hypotheses 

 they advance must be accepted as provisional until our knowledge is 

 greater. 



