THE REIGN OF MAMMALS., 203 



had their representatives in Europe during this period. 

 The prevailing types of quadrupeds were thick-skinned 

 Pachyderms and cud -chewing Ruminants. The hog 

 and the horse began to exist in the middle of the Tertiary ; 

 and somewhat later appear, either in Europe or Asia, the 

 cat, dog, weasel, hare, mink, hyena, camel, antelope, musk- 

 deer, sheep, and ox of the latter, several species. The Si- 

 vatherium was an elephantine stag, having four horns and 

 probably a long proboscis. It is supposed to have had the 

 bulk of an elephant, and greater height. This monster 

 dwelt in southeastern Asia. Many other genera, quite dis 

 tinct from existing forms, have had their former existence 

 disclosed by the patient researches of the comparative an 

 atomist. 



America was also a range of gigantic quadrupeds, while 

 the adjacent seas were the abode of mammalian forms al 

 lied to the whale. Of these, the one best known is the 

 Zeuglodon, whose bones are scattered over portions of the 

 cotton-lands of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South 

 Carolina. It is a striking sight to stumble over vertebra? 

 a foot and a half long and a foot in diameter, or to see 

 them plowed up from the black soil where they had been 

 mouldering ever since that soil was a sea-bottom. Yet 

 these bones were once so numerous in Southern Alabama 

 that they were gathered and burned for lime, and laid in 

 walls for fences. I have myself seen them used for andi 

 rons, and for building the steps of a stile over the door- 

 yard fence. This animal was about seventy feet in length. 

 The skeleton on exhibition in Wood s Museum, at Chicago, 

 is for the most part a genuine representation of the frame 

 work of this Tertiary, alligator-like whale. Some of the 

 TertebraB were wanting in this specimen ; and in the at 

 tempt to restore the missing parts, the paleo-artist has pos 

 sibly exceeded the bounds of truth, and given us a skeleton 



