EUROPE BEFORE ARRIVAL OF MAN 



of our modern pianists could be mistaken for 

 his contemporary great-uncle or great-grand- 

 father of our hoofed quadrupeds ! And this in- 

 stance is but one fair sample out of many of the 

 changes which the last five or six million years 

 have wrought. Speaking generally, it may be 

 said that in the Eocene age there were carniv- 

 ora, and there were ungulata, and there were 

 primates ; but these orders were not so clearly 

 distinguished from each other as they are to-day, 

 and they were not so clearly distinguished from 

 other orders, such as the rodents and insectivora, 

 while in many cases they had not ceased to bear 

 the marks of their marsupial ancestry. Or, to 

 put the case in another way, in the Eocene pe- 

 riod you have an instance of hoofed quadruped, 

 but you find no instance of any such special 

 form as horse or deer or camel ; you find car- 

 nivora, but you do not find a clear instance of 

 felis or canis or ursus, not even of hyaena, an 

 earlier type than either of the others ; and you 

 find primates, but among these there is nothing 

 yet so clearly distinguished as a monkey. In 

 short, the present species or genera of mammals 

 had not come into existence in the Eocene pe- 

 riod, but only the present orders and some of the 

 present families ; and even the orders were not 

 clearly distinct from one another, as they are at 

 present ; but they were closely interlocked, very 

 much as species are at present. In other words, 

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