222 DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



theory that the whale has been evolved from a 

 four-footed land beast and also to believe that the 

 ocean is older by far than the sandy beach, older 

 than Long Island itself. The ocean pulsates and 

 roars now just as it did before Long Island was 

 pushed out into the sea just as it did when the 

 Appalachian Range and the Rocky Mountains 

 themselves were but reefs of rock in the primeval 

 sea when New York State had just emerged 

 above the tide. The breakers dash upon the beach 

 at Amagansett to-day as they did upon 



THE LONESOME SHORE OF NEW YORK 



untrodden by man, beast or reptile and over which 

 no bird winged its flight. You can well believe that 

 New York was then a nightmare land, covered with 

 a carpet of fantastic and weird vegetation a vege- 

 tation which lived and died without damage from 

 bird, mammal or insect, for geologists tell us that 

 none then existed. Ages and ages after that time 

 when animal life appeared upon all the lands and 

 among them the ancestors of our present 



MILK GIVING CREATURES, 



one of them loved the water, and while spending 

 more and more time in that liquid it discovered 

 that the buoyancy of the water formed a better 

 support for its elephantine body than the thin air, 

 consequently its visits to the shore became less and 

 less frequent until, after ages, its descendants took 

 up their permanent abode in the open sea. 



