202 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



dress. We are told that these are put on "to 

 make the dress look pretty," but the student 

 regards the bows as vestiges of the time when 

 there were no buttons and hooks and eyes had 

 not been invented, and dresses were tied to- 

 gether with strings or ribbons. As for ruffles, 

 they took the place of flounces, and flounces 

 are vestiges of the time when a young woman 

 wore the greater part of her Avardrobe on her 

 back, putting on one dress above another, the 

 bottoms of the skirts showing like so many 

 flounces. So buttons, ruffles, and the vermi- 

 form appendix of which we hear so much all 

 fall in the category of vestigial structures. 



Where the mastodons originated, we know 

 not : Senor Ameghino thinks their ancestors 

 are to be found in Patagonia, and he is very 

 probably wrong ; Professor Cope thought they 

 came from Asia, and he is probably right ; or 

 tliey may have immigrated from the conven- 

 ient Antarctica, which is called up to account 

 for various facts in the distribution of animals.* 



* During the past year, 1901, Mr. C. W. Andreivs of the 

 British Museum has discovered in Egypt a small and primitive 

 species of mastodon, also the remains of aiiother animal which he 



