242 A BOOK-LOVER S HOLIDAYS 



The beast life of this prehistoric California 

 must be called ancient by a standard which 

 would adjudge the Egyptian pyramids and the 

 Mesopotamian palace mounds and the Maya 

 forest temples to be modern. Yet w r hen ex 

 pressed in geologic terms it was but of yester 

 day. When it flourished the Eurasian hunting 

 savages were in substantially the same stage 

 of progress as the African hunting savages who 

 now live surrounded by a similar fauna. On 

 the whole, taking into account the number, 

 variety, and size of the great beasts, the fauna 

 which surrounded Palaeolithic man in Europe 

 was inferior to that amid which dwell the black- 

 skinned savages of equatorial Africa. Even 

 Africa, however, although unmatched in its 

 wealth of antelopes, cannot quite parallel, with 

 its lion, elephant, and zebras, the lordlier ele 

 phant, the great horse, and the huge cat of the 

 earlier Calif ornian fauna; and the giraffe, the 

 hyena, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus 

 do not quite offset the sabretooth, the giant 

 wolf, the mastodon, the various species of enor 

 mous ground-sloths, and the huge camel; the 

 bison and buffalo about balance each other. 



There were no human eyes to see nor human 

 ears to hear what went on in southern Cali 

 fornia when it held an animal life as fierce and 



