92 MAMMALS. 



into the most fantastic shapes, and as it is washed away discovers fossils and lignites of a large 

 size, and is sometimes heard falling in large masses, with a dull, muffled sound. 



The accounts given of these suigidar districts, and of the columnar and grotesque forms of the 

 more indurated portions which have withstood the denuding action of the weather, might be used as 

 descriptions, on a small scale, of the scenery which we might expect would be seen were the 

 coral islands of the Pacific raised above the level of the sea. The follov\'ing description of them 

 is taken from Dr. Evans' account of them in Owen's " Geological Survey of Wisconsin : " — 



" To the surrounding country, however, the Mauvaises Terres present the most striking contrast. 

 From the uniform, monotonous open prairie, the traveller suddenly descends one or two hundred feet 

 into a vaUey that looks as if it sunk away from the surrounding world, leaving standing all over it 

 thousands of abrupt, irregular, prismatic, and columnar masses, frequently capped with irregular 

 pyramids, and stretching up to a height of from one to two hundred feet or more. So thickly are 

 these natural towers studded over the surface of this extraordinary region, that the traveller threads 

 his way through deep, confined labyrinthine passages — not unlike the narrow, irregidar streets and 

 lanes of some quaint old town of the European continent. Viewed in the distance, indeed, these 

 rocky piles, in their endless succession, assume the appearance of massive artificial stmctures, decked 

 out with all the accessories of buttress and turret, arched doorway, and clustered shaft, pinnacle, and 

 finial and tapering spire. One might almost imagine oneself approaching some magnificent city of 

 the dead, where the labour and genius of forgotten nations had left behind them a multitude of 

 monuments of art and skill. 



" On descentUng from the heights, however, and inspecting in detail its deep intricate recesses, 

 the realities of the scene soon dissipate the illusions of the distance. The castellated forms which 

 fancy had conjm-ed up had vanished, and around one on every side is bleak and barren desolation. 

 Then, too, if the exploration is made in midsummer, the scorching raj's of the sun pouring down in 

 the hundred defiles that conduct the wayfarer through this pathless waste, are reflected back from 

 the white or ash-colourcd walls that rise around, unmitigated by a breath of air or the shelter of a 

 solitary shrub. 



" The drooping spirits of the scorched geologist are not, however, j)ermitted to flag. The fossil 

 treasures of the way well repay its didlness and fiitigue."* 



These beds have been denominated the "White River Group by Mr. ileek and Mr. nayden,t in a 

 paper on the Nebraska deposits. They belong to the older deposits of the lower miocene. It is in 

 another series of beds called by them the Loup River Beds, which have been deposited after the 

 upper surface of the Wliite River grouj] had been worn into ravines, that remains of species of 

 the genus Felis occur, which they consider to be very closely allied to recent species. These 

 beds probbaly belong to the more recent period of the upper miocene. 



These prolific beds have been deposited in the lakes or freshwater estuaries into which the 

 remains of animals living on the neighbouring lands were washed, and deposited and preserved. 

 No marine estuary deposits have been found anywhere on or near the flanks of the Rocky Mountains. 



The range of these extinct feline animals in North America probabh'- extended for a consider- 

 tible space along each side of the long tertiary belt in the midtUe of North America and eastwards 

 to the Atlantic sea-board. 



No remains of true, or rather non-marsupial Carnivora have been found in Australia. 



* Owen's " Geological Survey of Wiscocsiu," p. 196. t " Proc. Acad. Nat. Soc. Philad. 1861," p. 4;J5. 



