AGE OF MAN. 311 



but there is a difference of opinion as to how many of 

 them did so. There are more of insects and birds in the 

 present age than in any previous one, but not so many 

 mammals as in the Mammalian age, or reptiles as in 

 the Reptilian age. Some animals have become extinct 

 within the memory of man. Outlines of three of them 

 are given in Fig. 180 (p. 312). The shortest one, the 

 Dodo, which lived in Mauritius and other adjoining isl- 

 ands, was a heavy, clumsy bird, covered with loose, 

 downy feathers, and having imperfect wings. It weighed 

 about fifty pounds. The earlier voyagers saw it, and 

 made sketches of it; but after the possession of the isl- 

 and of Mauritius by the French in 1712 it was no longer 

 known, and one or two heads and feet of this bird are 

 all that remain of it in the cabinets of Europe. The tall- 

 est figure is an outline of the Dmornis elephantoides of 

 New Zealand, exceeding the ostrich in size. The name 

 comes from two Greek words, demos, terrible, and ornis, 

 bird. The outline on the right represents another spe- 

 cies, the Dmornis ingens. Bones have been found in 

 Madagascar similar to those of these birds, and quite as 

 large, and with them some egg-shells. The bird to 

 which they belonged has been called ^Epiomis maxi- 

 mus. Its egg was over a foot in diameter, and equaled 

 148 hen's eggs and 50,000 humming-bird's eggs in size. 

 422. Man One Species. Although some few physiolo- 

 gists hold an opposite opinion, the evidence is very de- 

 cided that all the varieties of the human race belong to 

 one species, as is declared in the Bible. As this evi- 

 dence is brought out quite fully in my "Human Physiol- 

 ogy," I will not go into details here. Suffice it to say 

 now, that the resemblance, we may say identity, of the 

 races of men in all essential physical characteristics, and 

 especially in those which are mental, is unmistakable, 

 and that all the varieties can be accounted for from the 

 influence of circumstances, which, indeed, acting also 

 upon other animals inferior to man, but every where ac- 



