American Big Game in its Haunts 



cation that the one we find is never quite like the 

 one we left, and it is in such conditions that the 

 systematist must apply his knowledge of the gen- 

 eral progressive tendencies through the ages of 

 change, to the determination of the particular 

 changes he should expect to find in the special case 

 before him, and so be enabled to recognize the 

 footprints he is in search of. The genius to do 

 this has been given to few, but in their hands the 

 results have often been brilliant. 



Back in the very earliest Tertiary deposits, and 

 in all certainty even earlier, a group of compara- 

 tively small mammals was extensively spread 

 through America, and apparently less widely in 

 Europe, characterized by a primitive form of foot 

 structure, each of which had five complete digits, 

 the whole sole being placed upon the ground, as in 

 the animals we call plantigrade. The grinding sur- 

 faces of their molar teeth were also primitive, bear- 

 ing none of the complicated, curved crests and 

 ridges possessed by present ruminants, but instead 

 they had conical cusps, usually not more than 

 three to a tooth; this tritubercular style of 

 molar crown being about the earliest known in true 

 mammals. 



In the opinion of many palaeontologists, the an- 

 cestors of the present hoofed beasts, or ungulates, 



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